SOCIAL  FREEDOM  , 


^ 


A  STUDY  OF   THE    CONFLICTS   BETWEEN 

SOCIAL  CLASSIFICATIONS  AND 

PERSONALITY 


"fy-^L. 


BY 


ELSIE    CLEWS    PARSONS 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  AND   LONDON 

Zbc  ikntcfterbocker  press 
1915 


ttrt.?3 


Copyright,   1915 

BY 

ELSIE    CLEWS   PARSONS 


v 


Ube  TRnfcfecrbocfcer  press,  IBew  Korft 


CONTENTS 

Social  Classification 

PAGE 
I 

Age & . 

9 

Sex 

24 

Kin 

38 

Caste           ...... 

.       51 

Place-Fellowship        . 

65 

Friendship  ....... 

83 

Interclassification 

94 

Conclusion          .         .         f 

104 

tf 


Social  Freedom 


SOCIAL  CLASSIFICATION 

HTHE  modern  Chinaman,  however  feminist  he 
may  be,  cannot  avoid  referring  to  darkness 
or  cold  or  the  evil  side  of  the  world  by  the  same 
word  he  uses  for  woman — all  are  yin.  Nor  can  he 
write  the  idiograph  for  wrangling  or  intrigue  with- 
out using  the  character  for  woman.1  The  classi- 
fication once  made  by  his  ancestors  is  still  binding, 
more  binding  than  the  bandages  he  is  now  remov- 
ing from  the  feet  of  his  daughters. 

These  Chinese  examples  of  the  persistence  of  the 
category  of  sex  and  of  its  spread  over  the  irrelevant 
are  particularly  striking;  they  are  not  unique. 
To  the  Banks  Islander  whatever  is  long  is  male, 

xGroot,  J.  J.  M.  de,  The  Religious  System  of  China,  Index,  Yin. 
Leyden,  1 892-1 900.  Ross,  E.  A.,  The  Changing  Chinese,  p.  187. 
New  York,  191 1. 


;2'  *.;. ;  ■  \  \        Social  Freedom 

whatever  short,  female.1  "Let  your  knowledge 
be  feminine, "  was  the  early- Victorian  counsel  to 
girls. 2  The  Hopi  hold  that  the  North,  South,  and 
the  Above  are  male;  the  West,  East,  and  the  Below, 
female.3  Are  not  sun'  and  moon,  the  waters  and 
the  earth,  all  things  in  nature,  nature  herself, 
are  not  all  endowed  by  us  with  sex?  In  most  lan- 
guages gender  has  undisputed  empire  and  language 
itself  may  be  partitioned  between  the  sexes — parts 
of  it  peculiar  to  women,  parts  to  men.  In  Japan- 
ese there  is  a  first  person  singular  limited  to  the 
use  of  women. 4 

Classification  by  age  is  perhaps  less  conspicuous 
than  classification  by  sex,  and  yet  in  fields  already 
mentioned,  in  language  and  cosmology,  the  age 
category  in  its  turn  usurps  a  place.  A  precocious 
child  may  be  told  not  to  talk  like  his  grandfather, 


1  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.,  The  History  of  Melanesian  Society,  vol.  L, 
p.  91.    Cambridge,  1914. 

3  Bennet,  Rev.  John,  Letters  to  a  Young  Lady,  p.  101.  New 
York,  1824. 

3  Fewkes,  J.  W.,  in  17th  Ann.  Rep.  Bur.  Arner.  Ethn.,  pt.  2,  pi. 
cxxxv.,  fig.  27,  pp.  678-9;  "Snake  Ceremonials  at  Walpi," 
/.  Amer.  Eth.  and  Archceology,  vol.  iv.  (1894).  "To  the  Hopi 
mind,"  Dr.  Fewkes  writes  me,  "everything  has  sex — earth,  sky, 
rain,  lightning;  plants  have  sex  (not  in  the  Linnacan  sense),  etc." 

4  Spencer,  Herbert,  Sociology,  vol.  ii.,  p.  155.    New  York,  1898, 


Social  Classification  3 

using  " grown  up"  words.  "Lie"  is  an  unbecom- 
ing word,  we  say,  in  a  child's  mouth,  and,  "baby 
talk"  aside,  there  are  nursery  paraphrases  for 
many  simple  acts  or  objects.  As  for  the  age  of 
words  themselves,  that  staunch  conservative,  Sir 
Frederick  of  Urbino,  stands  not  alone  in  thinking 
that  antiquity  gives  "grace  and  majesty"  to 
language,  and,  compact  of  ancient  words,  a  tongue 
is  "more  grave  and  more  full  of  majestie,  then  of 
the  newe."1  With  what  emphasis  Plato's  spokes- 
man corrects  himself,  we  remember,  in  referring 
to  the  order  of  creation  of  the  soul  of  the  world  and 
its  body.  The  soul  was  made  first,  he  asserts,  for 
"never  would  God  have  allowed  the  elder  to  serve 
the  younger."  As  for  the  creation  of  animate 
creatures,  Timaeus  has  no  doubt  that  "women  and 
other  animals"  were  framed  from  men.2  In  the 
Jewish  creation-myths,  too,  seniority  seems  to 
have  been  a  factor  in  the  subordination  of  the 
sexes  and,  in  one  version,  of  men  and  animals. 3 


1  Castiglione,  Baldassare,  The  Book  of  the  Courtier,  pp.  63,  65. 
London,  1900. 

3  Timceus,  34,  76. 

3  Eve,  to  be  sure,  was  created  in  both  versions  after  the  animals. 
That  order  has  sometimes  been  improved  upon.    Richard  Brath- 


4  Social  Freedom 

But  in  classifying  men  and  animals  seniority  is 
not  always  a  foremost  principle.  The  animals  may 
be  accounted  man's  ancestors  or  his  elder  or  young- 
er brethren.  Kinship  is  the  principle  of  classifica- 
tion. In  totemism  the  kinship  category  is  seen 
spreading  to  the  inanimate  as  well  as  to  the  ani- 
mate. In  cosmic  myths  sun  and  moon  are  brother 
and  sister  or  the  stars,  their  offspring.  The  earth 
is  the  great  mother. 

Classification  by  rank  or  occupation,  generally 
speaking  the  category  of  caste,  is  widespread. 
The  lion,  it  is  said,  is  the  king  of  beasts,  or  the 
bear  or  the  serpent.  The  oak  is  the  forest's  king; 
the  rose,  queen  of  the  flowers.  Even  the  human 
body  has  been  subject  to  this  type  of  classification. 
The  head  is  its  lord,  states  Timaeus,  and  because 
the  front  part  of  the  body  is  more  honourable  than 
the  back,  man  was  given  by  his  Creator  a  forward 
motion.1  But  for  the  spirit  of  caste  should  we 
not  be  sideling  like  the  crab  or  backing  like  the 
sensitive  plant !  As  for  the  place  of  caste  in  lan- 
wait  writes,  for  example,  "Idleness  maketh  of  men,  women;  of 
women,  beasts ;  of  beasts,  monsters. ' '  ( The  English  Gentleman,  p. 
17.     London,  1641.) 

1  Timceus,  44,  45. 


Social  Classification  5 

guage,  it  is  well  known  that  certain  words  or 
turns  of  speech  are  common  or  vulgar,  others 
genteel  or  polite,  others  fit  only  for  lackeys  or 
fishmongers  or  court  circles.  There  are  even 
court  dialects,  and  there  is  a  language  of  the  street. 

Language,  it  hardly  needs  saying,  is  subject  to 
categories  other  than  that  of  age  or  of  sex;  it  is 
dominated,  for  example,  by  the  c^pgnty  of 
pla^e^fello^hiR.  The  local  group  not  only  has 
its  own  tongue,  it  often  lays  a  taboo  on  foreign 
tongues.  The  Ka-to  and  Kai  Porno  women  of 
California,  for  example,  are  forbidden  to  learn  the 
other  Porno  dialects;  Spanish  was  once  forbidden 
to  French  girls;  French,  to  Spanish  girls. ■  A  man 
may  be  accounted  an  outlander,  hence  an  enemy, 
by  his  speech.  "You  are  a  spy,  you  speak  Ger- 
man, "  or  "you  speak  English, "  is  a  common 
deduction  in  the  present  war.  During  the  Refor- 
mation a  belief  circulated  that  whoso  learned 
Hebrew  became  thereby  a  Jew. 2 

We  have  been  glancing  at  certain  irrelevancies 

"Parsons,  Elsie  Clews,  The  Old-Fashioned  Woman,  p.  283. 
New  York,  191 3. 

2  Child,  L.  Maria,  Married  Women,  pp.  132-3.  New  York, 
1871. 


6  Social  Freedom 

of  the  social  categories,  noting  their  spread  and 
the  way  the  unrelated  thing  or  circumstance  has 
to  contribute  to  them.  Their  compulsive,  obses- 
sive character  is  indeed  notable.  In  early  society 
they  are  not  open  to  question — not  even  by  social 
rebels.  In  early  society  there  are  criminals,  there 
are  even  revolutionaries — both  withal  compara- 
tively rare — but  none  is  bent  merely  on  escape 
from  social  classification.  Even  in  modern  society, 
where  there  is  much  shifting  within  each  category 
and  much  friction,  there  is  as  yet  little  evidence  of 
desire  for  freedom  from  the  category  itself.  Hu- 
manism, if  from  a  past  culture  we  may  borrow  that 
term  to  designate  the  wholly  modern  social  philo- 
sophy that  would  set  personality  free  from  the 
overbearing  rule  of  age-class,  of  sex  division,  of 
economic  or  political  class,  of  family  or  nation, 
— neo-humanism  is  still  a  far  cry. 

But  it  has  been  heard — and  by  many.  Their 
conceptions  of  personality  and  of  its  needs  become 
clearer  and  more  definite,  more  vital  and  dynamic, 
through  a  study  of  the  categories  once  so  dominant. 
From  them,  from  status,  let  us  say,  to  personality 
is  the  rise  in  level  our  restless  civilization  is  taking, 


Social  Classification  7 

and  the  more  we  are  cognizant  of  this  change  in 
level,  the  less  bewildered  shall  we  be  by  the  hetero- 
geneous movements  around  us  and  the  faster,  I 
surmise,  shall  we  proceed. 

Scientists  have  long  since  been  aware  of  the 
dangersjaignt  in  classification,  of  the""^xrest  to 
thought  its  rigidity  causes.  MgsaJisto  and  publi- 
cists  are  less  sophisticated. x  To  them,  or  rather 
to  those  among  them  who  have  never  left  the  level 
of  status  for  even  a  brief  excursion  to  the  level  of 
personality,  humanistic  theory  or  adventure  can 
be  merely  subjects  for  outcry.  "What  of  respect 
for  old  age?"  the  institutionalist  clamours,  "or 
for  women,  what  will  become  of  chivalry?  What 
will  become  of  art  or  of  the  amenities  of  life? 
What  will  become  of  the  children?  Would  you 
break  up  the  family?  Would  you  cast  patriotism 
to  the  winds  ?  and  loyalty  and  honour  ? ' '  Difficult 
indeed  is  it  for  those  standing  at  different  cultural 
levels  to  converse.     The  very  words  they   use 

1  Witness,  for  example,  the  naive  assertions  of  Woodrow  Wilson, 
Graham  Wallas,  and  others  that  modern  business  has  destroyed 
the  personal  relationship  between  employer  and  employee.     To      . 
assume  that  such  a  relationship  ever  existed  argues  ignorance  of  %L 
caste  psychology,  a  survival  perhaps  of  the  "natural  man  "  specu-  r 
lation,  and  a  failure  to  conceive  of  personal  relationship  in  general. 


8  Social  Freedom 

have  different  meanings  for  them.  Their  sets  of 
alternatives  are  not  the  same,  nor  their  opposites. 
To  change  our  figure,  it  is  as  if  we  circled  about  two 
centres,  one  the  centre  of  status,  the  other  the 
centre  of  personality.  The  circles  overlap  a  little 
and  in  the  common  segment  we  may  argue  together, 
for  the  most  part  to  disagree,  but  outside  of  the 
segment  we  do  not  even  discuss  or  compare — 
each  set  of  us  aghast  at  the  incoherencies  of  the 
other,  at  its  impertinences,  at  its  cruelties. 

Against  recriminations  from  the  other  circle 
one  can  undertake  no  defence.  But  against  cen- 
sure of  another  type,  censure  provocable  by  the 
following  discussion,  I  would  enter  a  plea.  I  fore- 
see criticism  for  falling  into  the  bad  old  trick  of 
the  evolutionist  sociologist  who  so  fondly  described 
society  as  an  organism,  a  subject  for  the  biological 
laboratory,  And  yet  I  would  not  personify  social 
categories,  nor  would  I  indulge  in  schematization, 
although,  I  admit,  my  verbal  shortcuts  may  give 
at  times  both  impressions.  I  wish  merely  to 
describe  a  habit  of  mind,  a  psychic  tendency,  that 
predisposition  to  classify  which  may  be  the  source  j 
of  disastrous  failures  as  well  as  of  great  achievements.  J 


AGE 

IF  you  happened  to  be  born  in  one  of  the  seaside 
hamlets  of  southeastern  New  Guinea,  you 
would  find  that  all  the  boys  or  all  the  girls  born 
about  the  same  time  were  to  be  associated  in  set 
ways  with  you  throughout  life.  A  man,  you  will 
go  hunting  with  your  kimta  mates  or  do  irrigation 
work  with  them;  a  woman,  you  will  go  fishing  with 
them.  In  general  you  will  play  the  host  to  them, 
and  on  particular  occasions  you  will  eat  with 
them — -at  small  feasts,  before  going  to  war,  on  re- 
turning from  communal  hunts.  When  a  kimta 
mate  is  dying,  you  will  visit  him;  dead,  you  will 
wail  for  him  and  take  part  in  digging  his  grave. x 

This  grouping  by  age  is  particularly  well  de- 
fined among  the  natives  of  Bartle  Bay,  but  it  is 
not  peculiar  to  them.  The  a^e-class  is  a  world- 
wide    institution.     Everywhere     contemporaries 

1  Seligmann,  C.  G.,  The  Melanesians  of  British  New  Guinea, 
pp.  470-1,  614,  616.     Cambridge,  1910. 

9 


io  Social  Freedom 

flock  or  are  thrown  more  or  less  deliberately  to- 
gether— they  mess  or  sleep  together,  or  form  clubs 
or  "  societies/ '  or  go  to  school  or  college  together, 
or  "come  out"  together,  or  go  to  war  together, 
and,  growing  old  together,  they  see  to  it  that 
among  other  social  boundaries  those  of  age  are 
duly  observed. 

For  the  age-classes  keep  or  are  kept  apart. 
In  New  Guinea  no  young  man  would  any  more 
penetrate  into  the  club-house  of  the  old  men 
without  a  special  invitation  than  well  brought  up 
English  children  would  venture  unbidden  into  the 
drawing-room.  Even  in  the  same  club-house  or 
drawing-room  reserve  with  one's  elders  is  a  require- 
ment of  good  breeding.  Such  good  manners  may 
be  likewise  but  a  proper  precaution.  "The  vital 
airs  of  a  young  man  mount  upwards  to  leave  his 
body  when  an  elder  approaches;  but  by  rising  to 
meet  him  and  saluting  he  recovers  them,"  de- 
clares Manu,1  the  Hindu  code-maker. 

Manners  commonly  serve  well  enough  as  a  bar- 
rier to  intimacy.     But  preclusion  of  an  intimacy 

x  The  Laws  of  Manu,  ii.,  120.     The  Sacred  Books  oftlie  East,  vol. 

XXV. 


Age  ii 

between  a  man  and  a  woman  of  different  ages 
sometimes  calls  for  even  more  effectual  devices — 
for  derision  or  for  the  assurance  of  mishap.  The 
Masai  who  makes  love  to  a  woman  of  his  father's 
age-class  is  cursed.  If  he  is  an  old  man  and  seeks 
a  girl  of  his  daughter's  age-class,  he  is  beaten  by  the 
other  old  men,  his  kraal  pulled  down,  and  his  cattle 
slaughtered. x  Among  us  such  disparities  between  -. 
lovers  are  merely  ridiculed.  A  woman  who  goes  \ 
to  extremes  knows  she  will  be  called  "an  old  man's 
darling"  or  "young  enough  to  be  his  mother. "      ^S 

Do  age-classes  take  up  with  or  have  imposed 
upon  them  peculiar  habits,  as  is  the  way  of  segre- 
gated groups,  or  have  our  feelings  and  ideas  about 
age  merely  tended  to  spread  themselves  out  over 
life?  Very  inclusive,  at  any  rate,  the  age  category 
is.  Not  alone  courting  or  mating  is  determined  by 
age,  but  dieting,  the  use  of  stimulants  or  narcotics, 
ornament  and  dress,  pastimes,  employment,  speech, 
posture,  gait.  Even  the~disposal  of  the  deceased 
is  affected  by  his  age.  Very  often  the  corpses  of 
infants  are  cast  away  without  ceremony.  Some- 
times,  contrariwise,   they  are  entombed  in   the 

x  Hollis,  A.  C,  The  Masai,  pp.  312,  313.     Oxford,  1905. 


12  Social  Freedom 

dwelling,  in  a  niche  in  the  wall  or  under  the  hearth, 
their  seniors  resting  in  less  homelike  graves.  Other 
funeral  details  vary  with  age.  White  crepe  in- 
stead of  black,  white  flowers,  a  white  coffin  or 
hearse,  these  distinctions  are  suitable,  we  feel,  for 
youth.  Between  juniors  themselves,  the  Chinese 
once  made  distinctions.  Those  who  died  between 
nineteen  and  sixteen  were  buried  in  wooden  coffins, 
outer  and  inner;  the  coffins  of  those  between  fifteen 
and  eight  were  enclosed  with  brick;  for  those  who 
died  under  eight  no  mourning  was  worn  and  they 
were  put  into  earthenware  coffins. * 

So  recent  and  inadequate  has  been  observation 
of  the  category  of  age  as  a  sphere  of  influence,  so 
to  speak,  that  readjustments  between  age-classes 
have  received  little  if  any  critical  attention. 
Among  primitive  peoples,  to  be  sure,  readjustments 
are  probably  very  rare — until  the  unsettling  for- 
eigner arrives.  Then  the  prestige  of- the  Elders  is- 
very  apt  to  be  sapped  through  the  lessening  of  their 
political  or  religious  control  or,  at  least  where  the 
White  Man  is  the  encroacher,  through  the  example 
I 

1  Li  Kt,  bk.  ii.,  sec.  i,  pt.  i ,  p.  12.     The  Sacred  Books  of  the  East, 
vols,  xxvii.,  xxviii. 


Age  13 

of  a  more  untrammelled  youth.  "  Formerly  any 
old  man  would  object  to  a  boy  smoking, "  a  Pueblo 
Indian  once  remarked  to  me,  "but  nowadays,  the 
boys,  they  don't  mind. "  But  among  White  Men 
conflict  between  the  age-classes  has  been  going 
on  for  some  time.  "Which  was  right,  for  the  son 
to  suit  his  ways  to  the  father's  or  the  father  to 
the  son's  ?"  queries  an  elder  in  one  of  the  plays1 
of  Terence.  I  doubt  if  Terence  would  ever  have 
put  this  question  into  the  mouth  of  Chremes  had 
there  not  been  signs  at  large  of  rebellion,  however 
incipient,  on  the  part  of  Roman  sons. 

Centuries  later,  among  the  barbarians  of  the 
north,  there  occurred  a  not  altogether  unlike 
revolt,  a  revolt  among  daughters  and,  more 
especially,  daughters-in-law.  Slav  girls  began  to 
break  away  from  home  and  young  Slav  wives  to 
demand  homes  of  their  own.  The  rule  of  the 
Elders  was  threatened.  In  Russia,  in  Rome, 
anywhere,  the  disintegration  of  the  patriarchate 
is  a  blow  to  gerontocracy. 

Although  Slav  peasants  still  believe  that  marriage 
without  parental  consent  calls  down  the  wrath  of 

1  The  Self-Tormentor,  Act  I. 


14  Social  Freedom 

Heaven,  Christianity  in  itself  lessened  that  paren- 
tal control  of  marriage  Roman  law  supported. 
Canon  law  made  the  consent  of  the  marrying 
essential  to  the  validity  of  marriage.  Thanks  to 
that  principle,  not  to  mention  contributing  factors, 
the  practices  of  infant  betrothal  and  marriage  have 
passed  altogether  out  of  our  culture,  and  today  the 
sole  anachronism  left  us  is  the  law  that  parental 
consent  is  necessary  in  marrying  below  the  age  of 
consent  at  marriage. 

However  radical  its  provisions  about  contract- 
ing marriage,  in  dissolving  it,  canon  law  returned 
to  its  more  wonted  r61e,  to  packing  up  the  Elders. 
The  stand  of  the  churches  against  divorce,  their 
views  of  the  indissolubility  of  marriage,  are  the 
outcome  of  the  distress  caused  by  dissociations  and 
broken  ties^  a  distress  felt  most  deeply  by  the  old 
and  by  them  most  guarded  against.  The  increase 
of  divorce  among  us  is  symptomatic  of  the  waning 
influence  not  only  of  the  churches,  but  of  the 
Elders.  It  is  in  their  despite  that  men  put  asunder 
what  according  to  ancestral  decision  God  has 
joined  together. 

The  supernatural  sanction  is  ever  in  the  service 


Age  15 

of  the  Elders.  They  are  the^nterpreters  of  super- 
^gturaJis™  ^nd  its  giiflrdjaris;  and  every  bit  of 
territory  lost  to  supernaturalism  means  to  them  a 
loss  of  authority  and  prestige.  When  plant  or  ani- 
mal reproduction  is  no  longer  viewed  as  due  to  to- 
temic  magic,  or  placid  seas  or  favourable  weather, 
to  the  propitiation  of  the  spirits  of  the  waters  or 
the  skies,  when  the  demand  for  charms  for  success 
in  fishing  or  hunting,  in  fighting  or  lovemaking, 
lets  up,  and  the  like  demand  for  prayer  or  amulet 
against  disease  or  sudden  death,  against  the 
dangers  of  travel  or  the  shock  of  life's  crises,  then, 
in  all  this  vast  system  of  ecology,  the  Elders  cease 
to  be  depended  upon.  Nowadays  among  us 
battleships  are  more  effectual  than  war  char 
Tt  iu    is  more  trusted  than  the 

weather-wise,  and  the  lViaicoxii  operator  than  the 
god  of  the  tempest.  Maps  and  charts  and  bulle- 
tins purvey  the  facts  of  wood  and  field  and  sea. 
Health  and  longevity  we  hope  for  through  whole- 
some living.  Courtship  is  largely  an  affair  of 
personal  charm  or  endeavour.  We  even  wish  for 
luck  in  general  in  a  self-sufficient  fashion  with 
a  glance  at  the  new  moon  over  our  own  right 


16  Social  Freedom 

shoulder.  In  luck,  let  alone  in  love  or  science, 
the  Elders  cut  no  figugg. 

The  fate  of  the  Elders  is  bound  up  with  the  fate 
of  the  gods,  and  for  both  the  word,  spoken  or  writ- 
ten, is  the  supreme  instrument  of  power.  But  in 
the  written  word  there  lurks  for  the  supernaturals 
and  their  representatives  or  guardians  a  danger. 
As  soon  as  the  arts  of  writing  and  reading  cease 
to  be  hieratic  secrets,  they  promise  opportunities 
to  youth  for  independence.  Although  scholastic 
education  continues  for  long  periods  in  the  grip  of 
the  Elders,  little  by  little  their  hold  is  shaken. 
Education  secularized,  in  course  of  time  not  even 
of  lay  teachers  is  an  advanced  age  required. 
Comparatively  recent  graduates  are  serving  today 
as  lecturers  and  even  as  trustees  in  the  universities. 
In^kh£_le£^^  in  general  senescence 

has  ceasedLtobe  a  necessary  qualification.  Would 
any  girl  today  write  in  her  journal  on  meeting  an 
agreeable  young  doctor:  "He  has  not  conquer'd 
the  antipathy  I  bear  a  young  physician — or  rather 
a  young  doctor?" r     The  girl  of  a  century  ago  could 

1  A  Journey  to  Ohio  in  1810,  p.  50.  Yale  Historical  Manuscripts, 
vol.  i.     New  Haven,  19 13. 


Age  17 

not  bring  herself  even  to  call  a  young  man  a 
physician ! 

The  prejudice  against  younger  men  overcome, 
their  work  may  be  compared  on  its  merits  with 
that  of  their  seniors.  From  that  comparison  to 
the  view  that  senescence  may  disqualify  is  but  a 
step.  The  next  step  is  retirement  for  age — a  step 
already  taken  in  modern  states  for  the  judges  of 
the  law,  if  not  for  its  makers — and  then,  where 
both  compassion  and  clear  thinking  obtain,  the 
old  age  pension. 

If  that  social  laggard,  the  law,  has  had  a  voice 
in  the  downfall  of  the  Elders,  we  may  be  sure  that 
many  other  factors  have  worked  towards  establish- 
ing at  large  the  theory  of  superannuation.  That 
respect  and  reverence  for  age  has  indeed  been  on 
the  decrease  none  will  dispute, — the  quarrel  has 
been  whether  or  not  the  decrease  is  a  sign  of 
degenerate  times,  whether  or  not  those  states 
which  are  the  most  excellent  in  their  morals  are, 
as  Cicero1  and  many  others  have  alleged,  the  most 
scrupulous  in  honouring  the  aged. 

However  that  may  be,  let  us  note  that  our  grow- 

1  De  Senectute,  xviii. 
a 


1 8  Social  Freedom 

ing  disrespect  for  the  Elders  is  not  of  itself  an 
attempt  at  emancipation  from  the  category  of 
age.  It  may  be  merely  a  shifting  of  factors  within 
the  category,  the  rule  by  the  old  merely  yielding  to 
a  rule  by  the  young.  The  very  vehemence  of  the 
prejudice  against  senescence,  the  concealment  of 
grey  hairs,  perhaps  even  the  unfailing  joke  about 
the  woman  who  will  not  tell  her  age,  all  suggest 
that  the  category  of  age  is  quite  as  obsessive  as 
ever.     And  yet  there  are  signs  of  its  restriction. 

For  the  first  sign  we  have  to  travel  back  a  way. 
It  lies,  I  take  it,  in  the  emergence  of  birthdays. r 
A  birthday  is  inevitably  somewhat  of  an  individual 
affair.  Its  ceremonial,2  of  course,  like  all  cere- 
monial, is  collective,  moved  by  collective  feelings, 
expressive  of  tradition  and  collective  points  of 
view.  But  birthday  ceremonial  does  direct  atten-  ' 
tion  to  the  individual,  rather  than  to  his  group. 
To  be  sure  it  may  point  to  the  inclusion  of  the 
individual  in  his  age  group,3  thereby  making  of 


1  Among  the  Greeks  before  the  eighth  century  B.C.  (Schmidt^ 
Wilhelm,  Geburtstag  im  Altertum,  p.  8.  Religions geschichtliche 
Versuche  und  Vorarbeiten,  vol.  vii.,  No.  i,  Giessen,  1908.) 

2  Somewhat  of  a  magic  ceremonial,  I  surmise,  to  prolong  life. 

3  Quite  conspicuously  it  does  this  in  China.     Chinese  birthdays 


Age  19 

itself  an  acceptable  link  with  the  earlier  age-class 
system.  Nevertheless,  despite  its  transitional 
nature,  birthday  ceremonial  is  revolutionary. 
It  makes  possible  the  disintegration  of  the 
age-class. 

But  birthdays  are  themselves  falling  into  dis- 
esteem.  Except  for  the  very  young  often  they 
are  not  celebrated.  They  are  even  rlurred  over. 
Away  from  officialdom  it  is  bad  form  to  ask  one  his 
age,  and  is  not  a  man  as  old  as  he  feels,  a  woman 
as  old  as  she  looks?  a  formula  if  not  conversation- 
ally happy,  at  any  rate,  like  most  conversational 
formulas,  of  some  sociological  import.  The  other 
day,  lapsing  into  a  moment  when  such  formulas 
take  possession,  I  asked  the  age  of  one  just  referred 
to  in  our  conversation.  "Oh,  the  age  everyone 
is,"  answered  my  collocutor,  "the  age  you  don't 
think  of,  neither  very  young  nor  very  old. "  The 
age,  he  might  have  added,  when  no  one  keeps 
your  birthday. 

The  passing  of  birthdays  has  been  a  consequence 

are  not  celebrated  with  much  eclat  until  the  age  of  fifty.  Then 
and  every  ten  years  afterwards  the  celebration  of  "making  ten" 
is  an  affair  of  much  expense  and  pomp.  (Doolittle,  J.,  Social 
Life  of  the  Chinese,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  217-20.     New  York,  1865.) 


\ 


20  Social  Freedom 

in  part  of  the  atrophy  of  the  principle  of  seniority. 
1  Vere  it  not  for  the  persistence  of  primogeniture  in 
I  )ngland  or  the  fag  system  or  the  stray  claims  of 
s  snio^inothgi^consp.n^^e  circles,  in  the  nursery, 
t  us  say,  or^on  the ixollege^  campus,  it  would  be 
d  for  us  today  to  realize  the  importance  sen- 
iority may  take  on.  It  has  postponed  the  mar- 
riage of  many  girls  besides  that  fair  Biancha  who 
was  compelled  by  her  father  to  wait  uncourted 
until  her  elder  sister  was  bespoken.  Outside  of 
Shakespeare's  Padua,  among  many  peoples,  get- 
ting married  is  a  matter  of  precedence  in  the  family. 
So  compelling  is  the  rule  among  the  Mordvins 
of  Finland  that  parents  do  not  object  to  a  younger 
daughter  becoming  an  unmarried  mother.1  For 
a  man  to  marry  before  his  elder  brother  was  in  the 
eyes  of  the  ancient  Hindus  a  crime. 2  But  outside 
of  marriage  or  of  the  inheritance  of  place  or 
property  or  of  the  numberless  ways  it  tells  in 
family  life,  seniority  counts  for  much — it  counts 
between  acquaintances.  Take  the  Chinese  or  the; 
Greek.     A  Chinaman  must  not  only  walk  behind 

x  Abercromby,  John,  "Marriage  Customs  of  the  Mordvins," 
Folk-lore,  vol.  i.  (1890),  p.  418. 
2  Manu,  xi.,  61. 


Age  21 

his  senior,  he  must  look  in  the  same  direction; 
sitting  in  the  presence  of  his  senior  he  must  keep 
a  watch  on  his  own  countenance;  nor  may  he 
introduce  into  their  talk  any  fresh  topic  of  conver- 
sation1— all  particulars  Plato  might  well  have 
taken  as  illustrations  of  his  own  generalization  that 
"what  is  older  is  honoured  in  no  small  degree  be- 
yond what  is  younger. " 2  4* 

Illustrations  of  this  attitude  in  our  own  contem- 
poraneous society  are,  to  be  sure,  rare,  definite 
illustrations.  The  age-class  has  disintegrated; 
seniority  is  becoming  insignificant  in  practical 
ways.  And  yet  in  spirit  the  attitude  is  still  pre- 
served— largely,  shall  we  say,  as  an  outcome  of 
orientation.  Standing  in  a  common  segment  of 
society,  the  segment  holding  the  facts  of  immatur- 
ity, maturity,  and  decay,  our  attitude  varies  with 
the  way  we  face.  Are  we  in  that  circle  of  society 
whose  centre  is  personality  or  in  that  whose  centre 
is  institutionalism  or  status?  In  the  one,  the 
helplessness  or  inadequacy  of  childhood  or  old  age 
inspires  us  with  pity  and  a  desire  for  service;  in 

x  Lt  Kf,  bk.  i.,  sec.  1.,  pt.  ii.,  21 ;  pt.  iii.,  10. 
2  The  Laws,  ix.,  16. 


22  Social  Freedom 

the  other,  with  some  pity,  perhaps,  but  with  a  desire 
for  control  or  subjugation.     In  the  one,  we  seek  to 
enlarge  the  opportunities  life  offers  youth  and  to 
minimize  the  handicaps  its  puts  upon  age.     In  the 
other,  we  check  and  thwart,  both  the  young  and 
the  old.     We  bully  them.     We  take  pleasure  in 
the  mystification  and  apprehensiveness  natural  to 
their  ignorance  or  incompetence.     Their  inhibi- 
tions we  encourage.     The  more  bewildered  and 
timid  they  are,  the  more  subject  they  become,  the 
/more  dependent.     In  the  circle  of  personality  we 
/    do  not  always  think  of  children  or  old  people  as 
J     children  or  old  people.     Whenever  it  is  possible 
J     we  treat  them  as  of  our  own  age,  whatever  that 
I      may  be,  that  is  as  of  no  particular  age.     We  forget 
\    the  whole  attribute  of  age  until  some  demand  upon 
\  us  for  compassion  or  tolerance  or  service  recalls  it 
to  us.     In  the  circle  of  status  we  are  ever  insistent 
upon  the  manifestations  of  age,  never  do  we  forget 
them,  never  do  we  let  either  the  young  or  the  old 
forget  their  age.      I    recall  in  a  gallery  of  the 
Luxembourg  a  sculpture  of  youth  and  age,  a  blind 
youth  carrying  on  his  back  an  aged  paralytic. 
That  group,  it  seems  to  me,  is  not  merely  a  sym- 


Age  23 

bolism  of  the  weakness  of  age  and  the  blindness 
of  youth,  it  is  an  expression  of  the  untiring  self- 
assertiveness  of  the  mature,  of  the  age-class 
dominant  and  domineering  today. 


SEX 

HPO  us  and  probably  to  all  peoples  sex  is  quite  as 
definite  and  dominant  a  category  as  age. 
It  is  quite  as  ambitious,  our  sense  of  it  as  impera- 
tive, so  imperative  that,  as  in  our  treatment  of  age, 
every  detail  of  life  (and  of  death)  becomes  an 
opportunity  for  formalized  expression — ornament 
and  dress,  food  and  drink,  occupations,  gait,  pos- 
ture and  gesticulation,  cries  and  language,  laughter 
and  tears,  innumerable  particulars  of  manners  and 
morals. 

Like  age,  too,  sex  makes  for  social  segregation. 
The  sexes,  like  the  age-classes,  are  seclusive  or 
exclusive.  In  endless  ways  men  will  have  nothing 
to  do  with  women  or  women,  with  men.  Each  sex 
has  always  kept  a  great  deal  to  itself,  avoiding  the 
other,  shy,  apprehensive.  In  general  the  separa- 
tion has  been  practically  contrived  by  the  rule  that 
woman's  place  is  in  the  home,  or  a  subdivision  of 
it,  and  man's  place,  outside,  in  the  world,  in  inter- 
24 


Sex  25 

ests  and  occupations  not  open  to  women.  In  public 
places  the  presence  of  women  has  been  forbidden 
or  unwelcomed,  covert  or  ignored.  Of  course 
the  circumstances  vary.  In  certain  New  Guinea 
tribes  during  times  of  religious  excitement  the  vil- 
lage is  deserted  by  the  women ;  they  have  to  take 
to  the  woods.  With  us  it  is  the  woods,  sometimes 
men  say,  which  are  no  place  for  women.  The 
streets  of  Seoul  were  once  taboo  to  women  by  day; 
there  are  streets  in  New  York  once  taboo  to  them 
at  night.  Once  in  England  ladies  went  to  the  play 
wearing  masks,  today  they  sit  in  the  House  of 
Commons  behind  a  grill.  "  Through  a  lattice 
made  of  bamboo  and  a  sort  of  silken  net,  they  see 
and  hear  all  that  passes  without  being  seen  them- 
selves/' writes  a  traveller  of  the  accommodation 
made  for  ladies  at  Chinese  banquets  two  or  more 
centuries  ago. ' 

The  opinion  of  these  Chinese  ladies  is  not  avail- 
able, but  Englishwomen  will  tell  you  that  they  find 
the  arrangement  of  the  ladies'  gallery  a  grateful 
protection. 

1  Astley,  Th.,  Voyages  and  Travels,  vol.  iv.,  p.  83.  London, 
1747. 


26  Social  Freedom 

Their  satisfaction  with  it,  their  feeling  that  it  is 
a"safeguard  against  the  men  below  them,  is  in  part 
an  expression,  I  take  it,  of  that  sex  antagonism 
not  uncommonly  manifest  in  more  direct  ways  in 
primitive  society.  In  Australia,  for  example,  in 
tribes  where  each  sex  has  its  own  totem,  men  and 
women  will  fight  together,  men  with  their  clubs, 
women  with  their  digging  sticks,  whenever  their 
totem  bird  or  bat  has  been  killed  by  one  of  the 
other  sex. x  The  creature  may  have  been  attacked 
in  a  spirit  of  mischief  or  malice,  in  much  the  same 
spirit  boys  shy  stones  at  an  old  maid's  cat. 

Now  and  again  one  sex  or  the  other  frankly 
avows  that  its  exclusiveness  or  seclusiveness  is  a 
matter  of  discrimination  in  its  own  favour.  We 
remember  how  Livy  puts  in  the  mouth  of  Cato  the 
Elder  a  caution  against  letting  women  have  their 
own  way.  "  Suffer  them  once  to  arrive  at  an 
equality  with  you, "  he  warns,  "and  they  will  from 
that  moment  become  your  superiors. "  American 
housewives  are  given  to  saying  that  they  for  their 
part  do  not  like  to  have  men  hanging  all  day  about 

1  Howitt,  A.  W.,  The  Native  Tribes  of  South-East  Australia, 
pp.  148-51.     London  and  New  York,  1904. 


Sex  27 

the  house.  It  upsets  their  housekeeping.  The\ 
Ainu  of  Japan  admits  that  women  are  kept  ignor- 
ant of  sacred  things  lest  they  turn  their  prayers 
against  the  men. ■  Less  than  a  century  ago  it  was 
at  times  thought  rather  unsafe  in  the  Episcopalian 
hierarchy  to  permit  women  to  hold  separate 
missionary  meetings.  "You  never  can  tell,"  said 
one  clergyman  who  attended  every  session  of  the 
women  of  his  church,  "you  never  can  tell  what 
these  women  will  take  it  into  their  heads  to  pray 
for  next.  "2 

But  in  these  expressions  of  sex  antagonism  we 
must  see  mere  suspicion  and  apprehensiveness,  the 
feelings  which  readily  arise  between  any  segregated 
groups.  There  is  here  nothing  but  a  desire  to  keep 
the  sex  boundaries  undisturbed,  no  sign  at  all  of  a 
desire  to  cross  them.  For  that  one  must  turn  to 
the  fabled  Amazons  or  to  those  buoyant  spirits  of 
the  Renaissance  by  whom  more  than  one  aphorism 
of  sex  was  questioned. 

Renaissance  challenges  of  sex  distinctions  bore 
fruit  in  the  nineteenth  century  in  that  struggle 

x  Batchelor,  J.,  The  Ainu  and  their  Folk-lore,  pp.  550-1. 
London,  1901. 

3  The  Woman's  Journal,  May  29,  19 15. 


28  Social  Freedom 

for  sex  mobility  Huxley  and  fellow  " philogynists" 
called  emancipation  and  we  of  a  later  period, 
feminism.  In  its  most  obvious _aspect&-this ^great 
sex  adventure  is  an  agitation  against  the  exclu- 
siveness  of  men.  In  regard  to  the  exclusiveness  of 
women  the  movement  has  as  yet  taken  no  destruc- 
tive position,  rather  has  it  from  time  to  time  coun- 
tenanced or  even  encouraged  that  invidious  spirit, 
the  very  spirit  most  characteristic  of  the  ardent 
woman  hater.  "As  women,"  declares  the  Wo- 
man's Peace  Party  in  the  preamble  of  its  plat- 
form, "as  women,  we  feel  a  peculiar  moral  passion 
of  revolt  against  both  the  cruelty  and  the  waste 
of  war."  Seldom  have  men  been  more  exclusive. 
There  has  been  no  concerted  protest  of  feminists 
against  sex  segregation,  but  individual  voices  have 
been  raised — sometimes  because  the  very  admis- 
sion of  women  into  men's  fields  necessitates 
association  with  men,  an  association  in  itself 
regarded  as  an  indifferent  or  even  an  unfortunate 
circumstance;  sometimes  because  of  the  theory 
that  co-operation  is  truly  desirable,  the  sexes 
through  their  differences  supplementing  one  an- 
other; sometimes  contrariwise,  because  sex,  it  is 


Sex  29 

believed,  does  net  enter  into  the  co-operation  at 
all — only  personality.  Let  men  and  women  as- 
sociate as  personalities,  it  is  urged,  not  merely  as 
sexes.  It  is  just  because  their  intercourse  has  been 
surcharged  with  sex  in  the  past  that  feministic 
propaganda  is  needed. 

Very  pregnant  is  this  charge  by  the  feminist  of 
oversexing,  and  highly  significant  the  analysis  it 
prompts.  Freedom  from  the  domination  of  person- 
ality  by  sex  is  the  gift  par  excellence  of  femimsm, 
a  gift  it  brings  to  men  as  well  as  women ,  anrjjiot 
only  to  men  as  men  but  to  men  in  their  relation 
to  women.  As  long  as  women  are  the  sex,  pre- 
occupation with  sex  being  to  such  a  degree  un- 
disturbed, personality  has  little  chance  to  enter 
into  sex  relations.  A  woman,  a  man  too,1  is  a 
personification  of  sex, 2  not  a  personality  in  whose 

1  The  plea  against  treating  men  merely  as  men  has  certainly 
been  less  vociferous  and  persistent  than  that  against  treating 
women  merely  as  women,  but  it  was  made  earlier.  Years  before 
the  publication  of  The  Doll  House,  an  American  writer  recom- 
mended to  young  ladies  "always,  when  conversing  with  gentle- 
men, to  endeavour  to  think  of  them  as  human  beings,  and  to 
forget  other  distinctions."  (Coxe,  Margaret,  The  Young  Lady's 
Companion,  p.  53.     Columbus,  1846.) 

3 1  cannot  forbear  giving  the  illustration  at  this  moment  under 
my  eye.  u  The  nearer  you  approach  to  the  masculine  in  your 
apparel,"  writes  the  Rev.  John  Bennet,  "the  further  you  will 


30  Social  Freedom 

nature  sex  plays  but  a  part.  Towards  him  or  her 
as  a  personification,  set  duties  are  owing;  over  him 
or  her,  set  rights  are  enforcible.  In  so  far  as  he  or 
she  is  husband  or  lover,  wife  or  mistress,  the  col- 
lective, institutional  attitude  is  easy,  the  line 
of  least  resistance,  involving  an  adjustment  once 
and  for  all,  certain,  reassuring.  He  or  she  has 
but  to  be  considered  as  a  member  of  a  class,  a 
class  towards  which  a  given  attitude  is  assumed 
or  presupposed. 

Any  shirking  of  this  attitude  or  violation  of  the 
standardized  feelings  or  ideas  it  implies  is  con- 
demned or  penalized  by  society  as  an  offence 
against  itself,  or,  from  a  modern  standpoint, 
against  those  prescriptions  it  established  for  the 
sexes  at  a  period  of  culture  when  only  an  economic 
or  a  sexual  relation  between  them  was  ever  con- 
sidered. Offences  between  men  and  women  as 
personalities,  offences  or  obligations,  are  not  taken 
into  account  in  the  primitive  institution  of  mar- 
riage or,  in  that  institution  of  the  less  primitive 


recede  from  the  appropriate  graces  and  softness  of  your  sex. 
.  .  .  We  forget  that  you  are  woman  in  such  a  garb,  and  we 
forget  to  love. "     {Letters  to  a  young  Lady,  p.  142.) 


Sex  33 

of  consent  at  marriage  becoming  the  legal  age 
at  majority,  maturity  the  only  age-criterion  for 
mating.  Prostitution  will  be  thought  of  as  a  sin 
against  sex  on  the  part  of  men  as  well  as  women, 
a  greater  sex  sin  in  men  in  fact  than  in  women,  the 
part  of  women  in  it  being  economic  rather  than 
sexual,  and  the  discrimination  against  women  \ 
prostitutes  being  in  reality  a  caste  discrimination. ■  J 
As  for  single-heartedness  in  mating,  under  free  cir- 
cumstances the  single-hearted  will  seek  his  or  her 
like,  as  will  he  or  she  of  polygamic  tendency.  One 
foresees  an  increase  of  monogamous  unions.  One 
foresees  too  in  mating  a  far  larger  measure  of 
candour  and  frankness.  With  reciprocity  as  the 
paramount  principle  in  sex  relationships,  many  of 
the  reasons  for  covertness  will  disappear.  Seduc- 
tion will  be  redefined  as  deception  on  the  part  of 
either  man  or  woman  as  to  what  he  or  she  asks  of 
the  other  or  offers. 

There  will  be  more  sincerity,  less  sentimentality. 
Change  as  it  comes  will  be  met,  not  lied  about  or 
shirked.     Life  is  change  and  any  live  personal 

x  Cp.  Parsons,  Elsie  Clews,  The  Family,  pp.  347-48.    New 
York  and  London,  1906. 
3 


34  Social  Freedom 

relation  is  a  changing  relation.  And  so  the  prin- 
ciple of  permanence  will  cease  to  be  the  final  cri- 
terion of  virtue  in  mating.  It  will  lose  its  very- 
egregious  place.  Lasting  love  will  be  esteemed  a 
good,  like  lasting  health  or  energy  or  happiness. 
But,  as  in  health  or  happiness,  the  enduring  char- 
acter of  passionate  love  will  not  be  considered 
solely  of  itself,  will  not  be  its  justification,  as  it 
were,  for  existing.  The  surcease  of  love  will  be 
accounted  a  disaster,  a  tragedy,  not  an  offence; 
a  misfortune  society  should  regret  or  pity,  not 
condemn  or  revile. 

Whatever  fresh  measure  of  sympathy  given  sex 
relations,  however  the  new  sex  questions  are 
answered,  it  will  be  realized  that  relations  between 
personalities,  whether  sex  enters  into  them  or  not, 
run  the  risk,  given  publicity,  of  becoming  imper- 
sonal and  monopolistic,  that  personal  relations 
cannot  be  standardized,  that  each  relationship,  if 
considered  at  all,  will  have  to  be  considered  in  it- 
self. But  would  such  a  task  be  possible,  we  may 
well  ask,  for  collective  thought  or  action  ?  Recog- 
nizing its  limitations,  will  not  society  begin  to  re- 
gard sex  relations  as  purely  private  relations,  no 


Sex  35 

more  its  business  than  friendships?  In  early  cul- 
ture, friendship,  we  are  to  see,  is  itself  an  affair  of 
covenant  and  ceremonial,  a  public  relationship. 
With  us  it  is  not  a  community  concern.  Time 
will  be,  one  ventures  to  predict,  when  the  sex 
relationship  likewise  will  come  into  its  rights 
to  privacy,  to  freedom  from  direct  community 
control. 

Again  standing  in  the  circles  of  status  and  of 
personality,  standing  in  their  common  segment  of 
sex,  as  we  face  towards  status,  we  see  sex  differences 
a  cause  of  apprehension  arid  alarm,  a  reason  for 
separating  the  sexes  as  completely  as  possible — 
physically  and  psychically.  All  intrusions  of  one 
sex  upon  the  other  sex  are  fearful  and  hateful,  to 
be  precluded  by  the  utmost  ingenuity,  by  social 
devices  of  all  kinds,  by  supernatural,  moral,  and 
legal  sanctions.  Sex  consciousness  is  encouraged 
to  spread  out  over  non-sexual  things  or  circum- 
stances; it  expresses  itself  in  quite  irrelevant 
habits,  it  is  given  all  manner  of  fanciful  associa- 
tions. When  the  sexes  do  meet,  the  conditions 
are  carefully  planned,  planned  for  the  most  part 
by  the  Elders  and  planned  to  suit  their  convenience. 


36  Social  Freedom 

Feeling  but  little  the  impulses  of  sex,  the  Elders 
deprecate  them,  belittle  and  degrade  them. 
Courtship  and  marriage  custom,  the  practice  of 
periodic  license  or  of  prostitution  are  determined 
by  the  Elders  to  suit  themselves,  or  at  most,  as 
compromises  with  the  cravings  of  youth.  The 
"good  of  society"  in  sex  relationships  generally 
means  the  good  of  the  Elders,  of  those  to  whom  the 
intimacies  of  sex  are  distasteful  and  change  in 
sex  relations,  vexatious. x 

Facing  towards  personality,  the  aspects  of  sex 
are  very  different.  Sex  becomes  a  factor  in  the 
enrichment  of  personality  and  of  contacts  between 
personalities.  It  is  a  factor,  not  an  obsession. 
It  counts  only  where  it  really  exists,  but  there  it 
is  free  to  really  count.  No  longer  a  source  of  dis- 
tress or  annoyance,  it  is  not  kept  separate  from 
life  nor  repressed  into  the  obscene.  It  is  free  to 
express  itself,  developing  its  own  tests,  standards, 
ideals.  According  to  these  ideals,  relations  be- 
tween men  and  women  will  be  primarily  personal 
relations,  secondarily  sexual.    The  standards  set 

*Cp.  Parsons,  Elsie  Clews,  "Sex  and  the  Elders,"  New 
Review,  May  I,  1915. 


Sex  37 

them  will  be  standards  of  frankness,  sincerity  J 
single-heartedness,  and  above  all  of  reciprocity. 
That  these  standards  can  be  lived  up  to  best  in 
a  private,  anti-monopolistic  relationship  will  be 
realized  or  realized  enough  to  free  sex  relations 
from  compulsory  advertisement  or  from  the 
necessity  of  furtiveness.  Then  at  last,  assured  of 
privacy  and  of  freedom,  passionate  love  will  forget 
its  shameful  centuries  of  degradation  to  spread  its 
wings  into  those  spaces  whereof  its  poets  sing. 


KIN 

T^HE  revolt  of  the  sons,  the  revolt  of  the  daugh-/ 
ters  and,  in  the  latter  end,  the  revolt  oLthe 
parents — what  does  it  mean?  That  blood  is  no 
longer  thicker  than  water  or  that  a  man's  clan  is 
not  really  indicated,  as  certain  Melanesians  think, x 
in  the  lines  of  his  palm?  Or  does  it  mean  perhaps 
that  Plato's  dream  for  the  continuance  of  the  race 
is  coming  true? 

The  philosopher  substituted  other  agencies  for 
the  family,  the  age-class  and  the  state,  substitutes 
modern  society  likewise  favours.  Day  nursery, 
school,  "summer  camp, "  factory,  hospital,  and 
"home,"  all  these  agencies,  public  and  private, 
are  making  of  the  modern  family  a  more  and  more 
dispensable  group,  economically  and  culturally. 
But  in  Plato's  time  and,  I  surmise,  in  all  time,  the 
family  is  more  than  an  economic  unit  or  a  medium 

1  Rivers,  The  History  of  the  Melanesian  Society,  vol.  i.,  p. 
251. 

38 


Kin  39 

to  perpetuate  a  miscellany  of  habits  or  customs. 
The  family  has  gratified  in  unequalled  measure  the1 
craving  for  status  relationships  so  urgent  in  the 
hearts  of  primitive  people.  It  has  supplied  set 
forms  of  companionship  unhampered  by  personal 
intimacy.  It  has  imparted  a  sense  of  participa- 
tion not  only  with  itself,  but  with  life  generally, 
giving  guaranties  against  disturbance  of  the  exist- 
ing order.  In  family  life,  personality  with  its 
inevitable  recognition  of  change,  the  unfixed, 
fleeting  spirit  for  lack  of  another  name  we  call  * 
personality,  has  no  place.  It  is  in  fact  anathema. 
When  Plato  substituted  age-class  or  state  for 
the  family,  when  the  tribal  interest  anywhere  has 
dominated  the  interest  of  blood  relationship,  when 
we  ourselves  encourage  or  suffer  the  inroads  of 
school  or  asylum,  one  kind  of  status  relationship  is 
merely  taking  the  place  of  another.  There  is  no 
novelty  in  that  movement  or  threatened  upheaval. 
It  does  not  alarm  us.  Nor  when  we  cry  out  now- 
adays in  fear  for  the  future  of  the  family  is  it  from 
any  real  apprehension  of  institutional  encroach- 
ment. The  intrusion  we  fear,  albeit  too  blindly  to 
recognize,  is  the  intrusion  of  personality. 


40  Social  Freedom 

But  if  the  family  disintegrates  as  we  forebode,  it 
will  be  due  to  that  very  fear.  It  will  be  due  to 
failure  to  heed  the  modern  demand  that  personal- 
ity enter  into  all  social  relations,  even  into  those 
in  the  past  most  hostile  to  personality,  the  familial 
relations. 

It  is  asking  a  great  deal  of  the  family  to  meet 
this  demand,  an  inner  revolution.  So  much  of 
family  life  is  standardized  and  prescribed,  the 
services  of  relatives,  the  time  and  place  and  nature 
of  their  intercourse,  their  reciprocal  emotions. 
Conversation  in  the  family  is  so  apt  to  be  stereo- 
typed ;  greetings,  inquiries,  jokes,  farewells,  formal- 
ized; formulas  of  sympathy  or  interest  expected 
or  demanded.  Then  there  are  so  many  family 
taboos,  so  great  an  insistence  in  the  family  upon 
conformity,  so  ruthless  a  use  of  ridicule  to  secure 
it.  The  ceremonial  characteristic  of  family  life 
in  times  of  crisis — at  birth,  at  death,  at  betrothal 
or  marriage,  this  ceremonial,  or  the  sentimental 
attitude  which  more  or  less  substitutes  for  it 
in  our  modern  society,  would  of  itself  preclude 
or  check  personal  spontaneity  and  personal 
influence. 


Kin  41 

The  kinship  category  is  embodied,  of  course,  like 
the  categories  of  age  and  sex,  in  groups.  These 
groups  have  considerable  variation,  the  single 
family,  the  compound  family,  the  clan,  the  tribe, 
the  possession  of  a  common  ancestor  being  perhaps 
the  only  character  common  to  all  the  groups. 
Descent  itself  is  reckoned  through  the  maternal  or 
paternal  line  or  through  both.  In  certain  totemic 
clans  or  in  tribes  like  the  Latin  or  the  Greek  the 
common  ancestor  is  got  through  magical  fortui- 
ties of  impregnation,  or  through  myth.  Within 
these  kinship  groups  there  have  been  conflict  and 
change.  Descent  has  been  shifted  from  the 
maternal  to  the  paternal  line;  the  joint  family  has 
encroached  upon  the  individual  family  or  the 
individual  family  upon  the  joint,  the  functions  of 
clan  or  tribe  have  grown  or  shrunk  out  of  sight, 
completely  out  of  sight  among  us  except  for  singu- 
larities of  inheritance  or  lingering  restrictions  upon 
the  marriage  of  cousins,  except  too  perhaps  for 
genealogical  organizations  like  the  Colonial  Dames 
or  the  Sons  or  Daughters  of  the  American  Revolu- 
tion. The  acclaiming  of  George  Washington  as 
the  father  of  his  country  can  only  be  regarded  as  a 


42  Social  Freedom 

highly  abortive  attempt  to  acquire  an  eponymous 
ancestor. 

On  the  whole,  the  importance  of  haying  ancestors 
lias  unquestionably  dwindled  in  moderiLjsocigtv. 
The  influence  of  thejdnship  category  jover  much 
irrelevant  to  kinship  is  also  passing.  In  primitive 
society  marriage  choices  are  very  largely  deter- 
mined by  ideas  about  the  bounds  of  kinship,  the 
prevailing  endogamous  or  exogamous  restrictions 
corresponding  to  those  bounds.  A  whole  com- 
munity may  be  divided  into  exogamous  moieties, 
or  A  may  be  sold  or  given  in  marriage  to  B  because 
B  is  or  is  not  a  cousin  or  a  clanfellow.  Incest, 
whatever  its  definition,  is  always  the  most  heinous 
of  offences.  With  a  division  of  labour  more 
elaborate  than  that  between  the  sexes  or  the  age- 
classes,  occupation  is  often  a  kinship  concern. 
Young  people  are  apprenticed  to  their  senior  rela- 
tives or  inherit  from  them  their  economic  or  pro- 
fessional properties  or  secrets.  Occupations  may 
be  even  taboo  to  those  who  would  enter  upon  them 
by  other  than  familial  paths.  "The  physic  of  a 
doctor/ '  according  to  the  Li  Ki,  "in  whose  family 
medicine  has  not  been  practised  for  three  genera- 


Kin  43 

tions  at  least,  should  not  be  taken."1  In  China 
a  doctor  had  indeed  to  inherit  his  father's  practice. 
Totemic  practices  may  also  be  passed  on  in  the 
family,  and  secrets  and  rites  of  magic  and  religion. 
Political  as  well  as  religious  offices  are  hereditary. 
A  child  is  not  only  " baptized"  in  the  religion  of 
his  fathers,  he  joins  their  political  party.  His 
habitat  is  fixed  too  by  birth.  He  spends  his  life  in 
the  hamlet  or  country  he  was  born  in.  Even  his 
friends  may  be  chosen  for  him  by  his  family.2 
Marriage,  occupation,  religion,  politics,  neighbour- 1 
hood,  friendship,  all  are  determined  or  greatly! 
effected  by  kinship. 

In  many  other  particulars  kinship  counts. 
Take  food.  Where  totemism  prevails  it  is  gener- 
ally a  wickedness  to  eat  your  totem  ancestor, 
however  appetizing  an  animal  or  nutritious  a 
plant  he  may  be.  About  to  die,  a  Kikuyu  father 
lays  down  for  his  offspring  rules  for  their  diet  the 
rest  of  their  life,  giving  these  family  rules  the 
sanction  of  his  dying  curse,  ki-rii-me.z     A  Toda 


1  Bk.  i.,  sec.  ii.,  pt.  iii.,  i.  a  See  pp.  85,  86. 

3  Routledge,  W.  S.  and  K.,   With  a  Prehistoric  People,  p.  21. 
London,  19 10. 


44  Social  Freedom 

does  not  feast  on  the  "day  of  the  week  his  father 
died.1  Fasting  for  a  set  period  is  a  common 
observance  in  mourning  for  relatives.  Still  more 
generally  mourning  involves  rules  for  ornament 
and  dress.  In  fact  at  death  the  sense  of  kinship 
is  apt  to  spread  over  the  whole  of  life,  its  spirit 
of  possessiveness  unresisted  by  the  mourners  and, 
since  it  serves  to  segregate  them,  favoured  by  out- 
siders. To  outsiders  a  mourner  is  troublesome, 
a  trouble-fete,  and  so  it  is  generally  held  to  be  un- 
seemly for  people  in  mourning  to  go  into  society, 
unseemly  or,  wherever  the  feeling  about  death 
infection  is  particularly  marked,  inconsiderate  and 
wanton. 

Mourning  is  a  veritable  storehouse  of  primitive 
theory  and  practice  of  which  family  seclusiveness 
is  one  of  many  expressions.  The  spirit  of  family 
seclusiveness  or  exclusiveness  may  show  itself 
on  the  occasion  of  a  birth.  I  once  spent  the  even- 
ing in  the  house  of  a  woman  in  labour.  Her  mother 
was  there  too  and  months  later  my  friend  told  me 
that  her  mother  had  been  offended  and  not  a  little 
incensed  by  my  presence.     It  was  contrary  to 

1  Rivers,  W.  H.  R.     The  Todas,  pp.  405,  407.     London,  1906. 


Kin  45 

native  custom — she  came  from  Boston — to  have 
an  outsider  present  at  such  a  time.  In  many- 
savage  tribes  none  may  be  present  at  childbirth 
but  an  elderly  female  relative. 

Apart  from  crises  in  daily  life  kinship  is  also 
exclusive.  In  many  communities  you  may  not 
belong  to  two  families  at  the  same  time.  Adoption 
or  marriage  may  entail  a  more  or  less  complete 
break  with  the  family  you  were  born  or  grew  up  in. 
If  in  spite  of  marriage  the  blood  ties  hold,  the 
marriage  ties  themselves  may  break.  So  strong"^ 
was  the  family  feeling  of  the  exogamous  Haida  In- 
dians, we  are  told,  that  a  man  would  not  hesitate  to 
betray  Jiisjsifetojdgath,  or  a  woman,  her  husband,  i 
for  the  good  of  his  or  her  clan. ■  Among  jusJamily 
interference  is  the  cause,  if  not  commonly^f  murder, 
not  uncommonly  of  divorce,  and  to  marry  into  a 
large  family  is  considered  somewhat  of  a  drawback. 
Friendship  as  well  as  matrimony  may  suffer  from 
the  exclusive  spirit  of  caste.  Within  a  generation 
or  two  in  Montenegro  you  could  not  be  the  friend 


x  Swanton,  J.  R.,  "  Contributions  to  the  Ethnology  of  the 
Haida/ '  p.  62,  Mem.  Amer.  Mus.  Nat.  Hist.,  vol.  v.  Leyden, 
1905-9. 


46  Social  Freedom 

of  one  to  whom  you  were  not  related1;  unrelated, 
you  were  ever  a  potential  enemy.  And  so  it 
must  ever  be  in  regions  where  the  blood  feud 
characterizes  family  solidarity — in  African  tribes, 
among  the  Arabs,  in  the  Kentucky  mountains. 

In  less  primitive  parts  of  this  country  hereditary 
enmities  are  very  rare.  He  with  whom  your  father 
is  not  on  speaking  terms  may  be  "a  particularly 
good  friend"  of  yours.  Juliet  today  has  little 
need  to  ask  her  Romeo  to  doff  his  name.  Among 
us  sex  relations  in  general  are  after  all  but  little 
restricted  by  kinship.  Only  within  the  narrowest 
of  family  circles  is  sex  intimacy  accounted  incest. 
Outside  of  the  countries  governed  by  the  Code 
Napoleon,  parental  control  of  marriage  is  slight, 
and  family  influence  in  winning  a  bride  or  a  bride- 
groom, negligible.  As  for  family  influence  on 
occupation,  it  may  aid  in  getting  a  job,  but  the 
nature  of  the  job  is  but  little  determined  by  parents 
— determined  directly  I  mean,  indirectly  it  is  of 
course  determined,  since  membership  in  an  eco- 


1  Durham,  M.  E.,  "  Some  Montenegrin  Manners  and  Cus- 
toms,"  The  Journal  of  the  Anthropological  Institute,  vol.  xxxix. 
(1909),  p.  89. 


Kin  47 

nomic  class  affects  the  education  parents  can  afford 
their  children.  Although  religious  faith,  patriot- 
ism, and  political  partisanship  are  still  greatly- 
subject  to  the  influence  of  the  nursery,  some  de- 
gree of  choice  is  left  the  individual  apart  from  the 
inclinations  of  his  family.  He  may  differ  from  his 
mother  in  religion,  from  his  father  in  politics. 
He  may  leave  home,  he  may  expatriate  himself. 

Emigration  is  a  potent  factor  in  severing  kin- 
ship associations.  Besides  the  actual  partings  it 
involves,  it  is  apt  to  affect  the  relations  between 
those  who  emigrate  together,  particularly  between 
the  different  generations.  The  younger  assimi- 
late more  easily  and  quickly  with  the  new  group 
than  the  older  and  therefore,  feeling  independent 
or  "  superior, "  chafe  against  their  control  and  ^ 
readily  revolt.  It  is  no  mere  coincidence  that  the 
land  of  the  immigrant  is  not  a  stronghold  of  the 
family.  To  the  making  of  the  precocious, 
"spoiled"  American  child,  migration,  both  immi- 
gration and  change  of  home  within  the  country, 
may  have  contributed  not  a  little. 

Whatever  the  causes,  indifference  to  seniority 
and  appreciation  of  the  younger  generation  at  the 


48  Social  Freedom 

expense  of  the  older  are  hard  on  the  family. 
Unsupported  by  its  ancient  ally,  the  age-class  of 
the  Elders,  a  class  too  far  gone  to  be  of  service,1 
its  sphere  of  influence  cut  down,  limited  to  the 
narrow  group  of  two  generations  and  its  natural 
rights*  and  capacities3  challenged  even  within 
those  confines,  we  may  well  ask  what  part  in 
modern  life  is  there  left  for  the  family  to  play? 
The  part  of  a  worsted,  outworn  conservative,  a 
sorry,  disspirited  complainant?  That  indeed  is 
the  part  commonly  assigned  it  by  its  most  zealous 
supporters. 

But  what  if  the  conservative  one  turn  right 
about  face  and  play  the  game  of  life  in  the  modern 
spirit,  what  chance  of  survival  will  it  then  have, 
what  place  may  it  take?  Suppose  the  family 
makes  of  itself  a  centre  for  personal  contacts,  a 

x  Its  passing  within  the  family  has  been  referred  to  by  one  old 
lady  as  "the  grandmother's  tragedy."  (The  Autobiography  of 
an  Elderly  Woman,  p.  158.  Boston  and  New  York,  191 1.) 
We  shall  all  agree,  I  suppose,  that  grandparents  are  not  what  they 
once  were. 

3  It  is  a  bold  because  an  ignorant  parent  who  claims  a  right  to 
his  or  her  "own  child"  nowadays.  "It's  my  child,  isn't  it?"  has 
ceased  to  be  a  justification  for  questionable  behaviour. 

3  In  the  face  of  our  societies  to  counsel  or  educate  mothers, 
what  woman  would  dare  appeal  to  her  "instinct"  any  longer  as 
qualifying  her  to  bring  up  her  child? 


Kin  49 

meeting  place  for  all  ages  and  for  both  sexes,  with- 
out discrimination  against  youth  or  age,  without 
prejudice  of  sex,  a  meeting  place  for  those  whose 
difference  in  earning  capacity  is  to  be  disregarded, 
and  where  the  privilege  of  feeling  "I  have  never  to 
take  my  work  home  with  me"  is  not  limited  to  one 
member.  Suppose  this  centre  becomes  a  backer 
of  the  spirit  of  neighbourhood  and  of  the  spirit  of 
friendship,  foregoing  with  its  oldtime  solidarities 
is  oldtime  jealousies.  And  suppose,  to  accom- 
plish this  position,  the  family  realizes  that  the 
utmost  individual  privacy  and  freedom  are  essen- 
tial; that  to  all,  conditions  making  for  the  fullest 
personal  expression  have  to  be  secured;  that  spon- 
taneity and  responsiveness  are  the  criteria  of  its 
success  as  a  group?  Suppose  it  realizes  that 
within  the  family  circle  none^must  be  kept  reluc- 
tant or  unwilling,  none  who  would  leave  it  either 
once  and  for  all  or  merely  from  time  to  time ;  that 
to  this  end  of  freedom  of  association  the  composi- 
tion of  the  family  group  must  be  conceived  of  as 
elastic,  variable  with  the  variations  in  personal 
relations.  Suppose  these  aims  become  the  char- 
acteristic ambitions  of  the  family?    What  then? 

4 


50  Social  Freedom 

With  heart  set  on  becoming  the  unique  champion 
of  personality,  its  guardian  against  immaturity  or 
decrepitude,  against  the  ready  encroachment  of 
passionate  love,   against  the  specializing  effects  J 
of  occupations,  because  of  all  these  pitfalls  its  I 
peculiar  guardian  and  champion,  truly  a  future  of  / 
great  import  awaits  the  family — if  it  be  discerned.! 


CASTE 

DEFORE  feminism  began  to  utter  its  sporadic 
protests  against  the  category  of  sex,  the 
category  of  caste  was  arraigned.  But  not  so  very 
long  before.  "A  man's  a  man  for  a'  that "  was  not 
written  until  1795.  Despite  his  liberalism,  the 
founder  of  Christianity  was  an  accepter  of  caste^ 
"Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's  ^ 
and  unto  God  the  things  that  are  God's, "  did  he 
not  counsel?  Even  the  revolutionaries  of  the 
eighteenth  century  fought  riot  for  freedojn  from 
political  class  but  for  a?  political  status  unhampered 
by  overlord  or  by  king  overseas. 

Very  ancient  is  the  class  struggle.  A  long  pro- 
cession of  historic  figures  has  passed — Roman 
plebeians  off  in  the  Alban  Hills  on  a  general  strike, 
English  barons  giving  fame  to  a  little  marsh  called 
Runnymede,  English  peasants  extracting  a  promise 
from  their  boy  king  that  never  again  they  be  named 
or  held  as  serfs,  American  negroes  escaping  to  the 

5i 


52  Social  Freedom 

great  swamp  of  Virginia  or,  in  later  years  by  the 
underground  railway,  to  the  north,  low  caste 
Hindus  taking  to  Islam  or  Christianity  as  an  escape 
from  utter  poverty  and  ignominy,  Russian  ter- 
rorists taking  to  bomb  or  bullet  as  a  relief  for 
distress  of  soul, — Sophia  Perovskaia,  Vera  Figner, 
Vera  Zassulitch,  Diderot,  Danton,  Tom  Paine, 
Jefferson,  last  of  all  George  Sorel  and  Emile 
Pouget,  Haywood  and  Tom  Mann,  belated  preach- 
ers of  a  class  consciousness  curiously  anachronistic 
in  our  modern  world. 

They  are  dramatic  figures,  these  protesters 
against  the  oppression  of  class  by  class.  They  are 
portentous  too  of  a  larger  freedom  than  ever  they 
dreamed  of.  More  significant,  however,  are  those 
humbler  and  more  obscure  figures,  anonymous 
for  the  most  part,  few  and  very  scattering  before 
the  past  century  or  two,  now  a  compact  host,  those 
restless,  ambitious  spirits  who  cross  the  boundaries 
of  class,  passing  from  class  to  class  for  varying 
lures,  for  wealth,  for  love,  for  glamour.  Time 
was  that  whatever  their  eagerness  or  effort,  the 
barriers  to  their  passing  were  well  nigh  insupera- 
ble.    The  Egyptian  warrior  who  engaged  in  aught 


Caste  53 

but  war  broke  the  law. J  In  imperial  Rome,  the 
guildsman  who  entered  army  or  church  was 
ordered  back  to  his  guild;  the  curial  who  sought 
the  Palatine  service  or  senatorial  position,  back  to 
his  municipality,  the  fugitive  colonus  was  restored 
to  his  master's  estate. 2  The  English  serf  in  search 
of  trade  or  hire  was  outlawed ;  a  runaway  labourer 
was  branded  on  the  forehead  with  hot  iron.  The 
English  universities  closed  their  gates  to  villeins. 
A  peasant  child  was  forbidden  apprenticeship  in  a 
town.  As  late  as  the  middle  nineteenth  century 
there  were  English  squires  who  objected  to  the 
peasantry  learning  to  read  or  to  figure.  Were  we 
not  told  a  decade  or  two  ago  that  a  high  school  V 
education  or  educational  "frills"  only  made  pupils^/ 
dissatisfied  with  their  station  in  life?  And  is  not 
the  ambition  of  the  new  vocational  education 
sometimes  prostituted  into  a  method  for  the 
fixation  of  caste? 

The  possibility  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  station 
you  are  born  to  is  not  even  entertained  in  many 


1  Plato,  Timceus,  24. 

2  Dill,  Samuel,  Roman  Society  in  the  Last  Century  of  the  Western 
Empire,  pp.  234,  256,  281.     London,  19 10. 


54  Social  Freedom 

societies.  Does  a  Brahman  ever  dream  of  being 
aught  but  a  Brahman?  And  in  India,  once  a 
fisherman  or  a  barber,  always  a  fisherman  or  a 
barber,  or  whatever  your  father  was. x  Even  where 
people  think  themselves  freer  than  the  castemen 
of  India  to  choose  their  jobs,  passing  from  one 
kind  of  occupation  to  another  is  fairly  difficult. 
The  clerk  hesitates  to  become  an  artisan ;  the  priest, 
a  merchant;  the  merchant,  an  actor.  A  jack  of  all 
trades  is  taunted  with  being  master  of  none.  A 
rolling  stone  is  a  term  of  reproach;  an  unfrocked 
priest,  an  insult. 

This  immobility  may  be  at  times  due  to  the  fear, 
as  we  say,  of  coming  down  in  the  world;  but  it  is 
also  caused  by  a  reluctance  to  part  from  old 
associates  and  forego  old  habits.  The  break  must 
be  so  thorough.  You  cannot  combine  two  profes- 
sions or  trades  either  in  India  or  in  this  country. 
Your  trade-union  or  your  caste  headmen  will  not 
suffer  it;  it  is  contrary  to  professional  honour  or 
etiquette.     An   American   lawyer  who  writes   a 

1  Unless  the  change  can  be  made  collectively  and  a  new  caste 
formed.  The  Madhunapit  are  barbers  who  became  confectioners, 
the  Chasadhobas,  washermen  who  took  to  agriculture.  (Risley, 
Herbert,  The  People  of  India,  p.  76.   Calcutta  and  London,  1908.) 


Caste  55 

novel  must  pubUsh  it  anonymously.  A  Secretary 
of  State  damages  his  reputation  when  he  goes  on 
the  road.  A  stock  exchange  may  close,  but  its 
brokers  must  wait  in  idleness  for  it  to  reopen.  A 
collapse  in  the  cotton  industry  in  India  means 
starvation  for  thousands  of  spinners;  as  members 
of  the  weaver  caste  they  dare  not  take  to  any 
other  means  of  livelihood. 

In  changing  your  calling,  your  separation  from 
old  associates  is  necessary  because  of  the  lines 
drawn  between  one  class  and  another.  The 
squire  does  not  dine  with  the  shopkeeper;  the 
housemaid  with  the  housekeeper.  A  Sudra  culti- 
vator refuses  to  eat  with  all  other  Sudra  sub-castes. 
Even  a  Pariah  will  not  entertain  Chucklers,  the 
cobbler  caste.  Our  servants  and  tradespeople 
may  make  use  of  special  entrances  and  back  stairs 
with  entire  safety,  but  the  Pariah  who  sets  more 
than  one  foot  inside  a  Brahman's  house  runs  the 
risk  of  death.  The  range  of  pollution  of  beef- 
eating  Pariahs  is  sixty-four  feet. 

Caste  feeling  impels  not  only  to  segregation,  it 
imparts  to  the  groups  it  creates  traits  not  at  all 
pertinent  or  consequential.     Consider  its  irrelevan- 


56  Social  Freedom 

cies  in  India.  Among  the  Nairs,  polyandry  is  a 
caste  feature,  among  the  Kullars,  robbery.  The 
Lambadis,  a  nomad,  half -brigand,  half -trader  caste, 
may  drink  no  water  not  drawn  from  springs  or 
wells.  When  a  Morsa-Okkala-Makkalu  caste- 
woman  marries  off  her  eldest  daughter,  she  has  to 
amputate  two  joints  of  two  fingers  of  her  right 
hand.  The  castes  in  the  Carnatic  may  never  wash 
their  clothes.  Throughout  the  country  the  cut 
and  colour  of  clothes,  the  way  of  putting  them  on, 
I  the  wearing  of  jewels  are  all  particulars  deter- 
I  mined  by  caste.1  And  so  too,  if  less  rigorously, 
with  us.  "  She  wears  her  clothes  like  a  lady, "  we 
say,  "he  dresses  like  a  gentleman."  But  you 
must  not  only  dress  in  accordance  with  your 
station  in  life,  your  whole  scale  of  living  must 
be  suitable.  Likewise  your  pastimes,  pleasures, 
and  aesthetic  pursuits.  Members  of  one  of  the 
social  divisions  of  Mota,  one  of  the  Banks  Islands, 
are    precluded   from   singing   songs.2    In  Greece 

1  Dubois,  J.  A.,  Hindu  Manners,  Customs,  and  Ceremonies, 
pp.  17-20.     Oxford,  1899. 

2  Rivers,  vol.  L,  p.  23.  The  classification  is  rather  of  kinship 
than  of  occupation,  but  it  has  caste  features.  The  caste  charac- 
ter of  such  divisions  in  Fiji  is  marked.     (lb.,  vol.  i.,  p.  265.) 


Caste  57 

no  slave  or  servant  was  allowed  to  study  painting, 
a  taboo  applying  in  India  only  to  the  higher 
castes.  "He  turned  out  to  be  an  artist,"  com- 
ments a  native  of  Kewanee,  Illinois,  in  a  recent 
American  play;  "too  bad,  his  family  were  nice 
people  too." 

Class  immobility  and  class  exclusiveness,  class 
consciousness  and  class  struggle,  seera  to  be  the 
stages  of  the  obsession  men  have  been  imprisoned 
in  by  caste.  Even  today  few  are  free  from  this 
obsession.  Now  and  then  a  poet  escapes,  now  and 
then  a  vagabond.  But  even  the  poet  has  to  fight 
continually  for  his  freedom,  once  he  leaves  the 
dignities  of  his  solitude,  and  the  vagabond  is  free 
only  because  he  is  content  to  be  confused  with  the 
derelict  or  outcast. 

And  yet  caste  is  truly  not  as  enveloping  as  it 
was.  Rents  have  been  made  in  its  nets — even  in 
Kewanee,  Illinois.  For  in  Kewanee,  as  elsewhere, 
wealth  accumulates,  and  wealth  is  a  solvent  of 
caste.  Even  in  its  primitive  forms  wealth  makes 
for  mobility.  On  the  northwest  coast  of  America 
the  giver  of  potlatches  becomes  a  chief;  prompt 
payment  of  pigs   ensures  a  rapid   promotion  in 


58  Social  Freedom 

the  orders  of  the  secret  societies  of  Melanesia. 
However,  not  until  barter  has  been  replaced  by 
money  and  credit,  is  the  idea  formulated  that  caste 
prerogatives  have  their  price.  i  l  Nowadays  money 
is  caste,"  is  a  Hindu  saying.1  Asked  "whether 
poverty  impeacheth  or  staineth  nobility/ '  that 
staunch  defender  of  the  gentry,  Master  Henry 
Peacham,  can  only  answer:  "Riches  are  as  an 
ornament,  not  the  cause  of  nobility.  "2  Con- 
l  tempt  for  the  parvenu,  the  nouveau  riche,  is  the 
last  stand  of  caste  against  the  overcoming  of  its 
barriers  by  wealth. 

Money  in  relation  to  the  category  of  caste  is 
somewhat  analogous  to  birthdays  in  relation  to  the 
category  of  age.     Money  directs  attention  to  the 

individual.     It    provides    opportunity fox^Jn- 

dividud  exgrassion.3  It  does  not  of  itself  do 
away  with  class  marks,  like  birthdays  it  seems  at 
times  to  favour  them,  for  those  who  want  them 

x  Risley,  App.  I.,  p.  xxxi. 

2  Compleat  Gentleman,  1634,  p.  10.     Oxford,  1906. 

3  For  example,  in  the  New  Hebrides,  on  Pentecost  Island,  "a 
rich  man  after  drinking  will  take  sugar  cane  in  his  mouth  and 
after  spitting  this  out,  will  take  a  second  piece,  shoot  it  out  of  his 
mouth,  and  utter  a  long  drawn-out  cry  which  is  a  sign  to  everyone 
that  he  is  a  rich  man."     (Rivers,  vol.  i.,  p.  212.) 


Caste  59 

it  is  an  instrument;  but  it  does  give  people  a 
chance,  however  slight,  to  choose  the  marks  they 
fancy.  It  is  a  master  key  to  the  doors  of  caste 
(to  the  doors  locked  by  the  categories  of  sex  and 
age  as  well),  and  it  introduces  confusion  into  those 
matters  caste  once  claimed  for  its  own, — into 
distinctions  of  dress  or  diet,  or  housing,  of  con- 
sumption in  general,  and  not  least  into  caste 
endogamy.  In  India,  for  example,  "hypergamy," 
marrying  up,  is  a  matter  of  wealth.  Bridegrooms 
from  a  higher  caste  come  high,  and  only  families 
of  means  can  afford  them.  The  charming  Japa- 
nese lady  who  was  once  my  hostess  in  Tokio  had 
never  been  received  at  court  although  her  father- 
in-law  was  one  of  the  Elder  Statesmen.  Her  own 
father  was  a  millionaire,  her  grandfather  a  coolie. 
I  have  heard  of  cases  of  marrying  for  position  or 
money  in  the  United  States. 

Money  undermines  the  customary  foundations  of 
caste  and  money  gives  mobility,  but  would  it  not 
appear  to  recreate  caste,  merely  substituting  a 
property  psychosis  for  an  occupation  or  birth 
psychosis,  asking  how  much  have  you  got,  instead 
of  what  do  you  do  or  who  was  your  father?     Does 


60  Social  Freedom 

it  not  replace  hereditary  or  occupation  classes  by 
income  classes,  distinctions  through  birth  or 
work  by  distinctions  through  income,  distinctions 
between  labour  and  capital,  between  the  masses 
and  the  classes,  between  the  poor  man  and  the 
rich?  Among  the  Goajira  Indians  of  Colombia 
it  is  only  the  poor  man  who  may  be  insulted  with 
impunity,1  a  distinction  met  elsewhere.  Even 
that  great  miscellany  of  collective  activities  which 
has  been  captured  from  caste  control  through 
political  democracy  is  at  the  mercy  of  "the 
Interests/ '  the  moneyed  people.  Democracy  is  a 
prey  to  plutocracy. 

To  safeguard  democracy  and  to  complete  its 
reaction  against  caste  control,  the  socialist  would 
give  industrial  functions  to  the  state,  democratiz- 
ing economy.  As  to  the  justifiability  of  the  am- 
bitions of  industrial  democracy  or  socialism  there 
is,  I  suppose,  little  critical  dispute;  it  is  only  its 
realization  that  is  questioned.  Two  outcomes  are 
possible,  depending  on  the  adoption  of  the  principle 
of  reward  accqrdjngjojlfied  or  of  the  principle  of 

1  Simons,  F.  A.  A.,  "  An  Exploration  of  the  Goajira  Peninsula." 
Proc.  Roy.  Geog.  Soc,  N.  £.,  vol.  vii.  (1885),  p.  7S6. 


Caste  61 

reward  according  to  service.  In  the  first  case, 
caste  distinctions  wHTbe  eliminated  through  the 
formation  of  but  one  class,  an  assimilation  the 
critics  of  socialism  have  in  mind  when  they  up- 
braid it  with  the  stigma  of  mediocrity,  of  levelling 
down,  of  checking  progress  through  discouraging 
individual  variation,  and  of  sentimentally  ignoring 
the  variations  the  difference  in  occupations  neces- 
sarily develops.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  principle 
of  pay  for  service  is  followed,  caste  inequalities, 
the  critics  assert,  will  not  only  continue,  they 
will  be  heightened,  and  caste  control  will  be  greatly 
strengthened.  In  argument,  they  point  to  the 
bureaucratic,  self-seeking,  log-rolling  character  of 
the  employees  of  the  present-day  political  demo- 
cracy. Moreover  unrestricted  majority  dictation 
in  production  will  inevitably  lower  below  the  point 
of  stimulation  the  reward  of  skilled  labour  or 
inventiveness,  scant  at  best.  The  unskilled 
labourer  will  vote  himself  higher  pay  than  the 
mechanic  or  physician  or  artist. 

From  such  difficulties  the  youngest  of  economic 
radicals,  the  syndicalists,  keep  clear.  The  syn- 
dicalists are  not  bothered  by  questions  of  political 


62  Social  Freedom 

control,  for  with  the  State  they  would  have  noth- 
ing to  do.  Craft  control  of  industry  is  their  object, 
class  consciousness  and  class  war,  their  methods. 
Syndicalism  is  a  vehement  outburst  of  caste  ex- 
clusiveness.  It  is  an  expression  too  of  the  greedi- 
ness of  the  caste  spirit.  The  syndicalist  must  never 
think  of  himself,  he  is  told,  except  as  a  member  of 
his  craft.  He  is  to  be  completely  possessed  bv  the 
category  of  caste. 

Contemporaneous  with  syndicalism  and  socialism 
have  been  many  radicals  who  do  not  find  any  less 
equivocal  or  more  pleasing  tag  for  themselves  than 
that  of  .social  reformers.  Their  social  philosophy 
is  too  indefinite  and  uncertain  for  a  less  dubious 
name.  Beyond  saying  that  they  would  give 
greater  opportunities  to  this  or  that  handicapped 
or  disabled  group,  they  have  no  formulations. 
Sometimes  they  would  enfranchise  a  disfranchised 
group — peasants  or  negroes  or  women.  Some- 
times they  favour  trade-unionism  as  a  weapon  for 
higher  wages  and  more  leisure.  Various  measures 
to  remedy  economic  hardships  get  their  support — 
the  redistribution  of  land,  single  tax,  income  or 
inheritance  tax,  insurance  against  illness  or  un- 


Caste  63 

employment,  old  age  pensions,  mothers'  pensions, 
the  minimum  day  or  wage.  For  bettering  public 
communication  and  transportation,  sanitation, 
health,  education,  recreation,  they  favour  any 
agent  at  hand — public  or  private;  they  are  0£gflt 
ttfUStfti  averse  neither  to  state  control  nor  to 
private  munificence.  To  them  social  reform' 
means  increased  social  opportunity,  opportunity 
through  a  more  equable  distribution  of  private 
property  or  opportunity  through  an  increase  of 
collective  facilities  irrespective  of  private  property.] 
Incoherent,  erratic,  and  empirical  as  are  these 
movements  it  is  in  them  that  freedom  from  caste 
control  seems  to  lie.  None,  the  social  oppor- 
tunists seem  to  say,  none  must  be  categorized  by 
his  occupation,  nor  his  opportunities  as  a  man 
limited  to  those  it  affords.  His  earning  power 
should  not  set  the  bounds  to  his  opportunities  for 
social  intercourse  or  personal  development  Let 
us  dissociate  the  worker  from  his  work  in  so  far  as 
it  does  not  truly  affect  him.  His  work  must  deter- 
mine much  of  his  life,  but  a  large  part  it  should  not 
determine  at  all.  His  working  clothes  he  will  not 
,  wear  outside  working  hours.     You  could  not  classi- 


\ 


64  Social  Freedom 

fy  him  by  the  way  he  eats  or  drinks  as  you  could 
a  Kwakiutl  nobleman1  or  other  well-bred  Amer- 
icans. Nor  could  you  tell  him  by  his  speech  as 
you  could  a  smith  among  the  Masai,2  or  manual 
labourers  elsewhere.  In  his  work  he  may  develop 
a  special  code  of  manners  or  morals,  but  outside  of 
it  his  conduct  will  not  be  class  conduct,  his  ethical 
theory  not  class  theory.  His  outlook  will  not  be 
a  class  outlook.  Independently  of  the  worth  of 
his  work  to  himself  or  to  society,  more  and  more  of 
the  facilities  of  the  world  will  become  his;  the 
place  he  lives  in,  his  neighbourhood,  and  the  places 
he  is  in  touch  with,  various  sub-divisions  of  the 
world,  all  will  have  more  to  give  him ;  his  life  as  a 
neighbour  and  as  a  world  citizen  will  be  ampler  and 
richer. 

x  As  it  is  undignified  to  drink  water  at  meals  he  does  not  eat 
anything  that  would  make  him  cough.  (Boas,  Franz,  "The 
Kwakiutl  of  Vancouver  Islands, "  p.  427,  Mem.  Amer.  Mus.  Nat. 
Hist.  vol.  v.,  Leyden,  1905-09.) 

aHollis,  p.  331. 


PLACE-FELLOWSHIP 

i  CONOMIC  exchangers  a  disintegrating  factory 
not  only  with  pastes,  bttt  with  the  groups  we 


may  ca^^lacfirfdlowsMgs^rmigratory  hordes  or 
fixed  hamlets,  tribes,  or  cities,  or  nations.  In  very 
early  cultures  a  feeble  instrument  for  inter-group 
assimilation — the  Veddas  once  put  down  their 
articles  of  barter  on  the  edge  of  their  tribal  land 
and  never  laid  eyes  on  the  Cingalese  they  traded  , 
with — exchange  is  becoming  one  of  the  most 
effective  means  for  world  unity.  The  preserva- 
tion of  world-wide  trade  and  credit  begins  to 
rival  as  a  collectivist  objective  the  preservation  of 
national  integrity,  and  it  is  the  persistence  of 
national  checks  on  freedom  cf  commerce,  together 
with  the  theory  that  trade  follows  the  flag,  that 
more  than  any  other  condition  renders  stiUpossible 
that  extreme^self-assertion^J-iiatiQnalism^  inter- 
national war. 

The  tariff  system  is  a  conspicuous  example  of 

5  65 


66  Social  Freedom 

the  way  the  horde  or  neighbourhood  category 
will  spread,  like  the  other  categories,  over  fields 
not  its  own.  Given  the  modern  industrial  system, 
protective  tariffs  are  obviously  the  outcome  of 
overweening  group  ambition,  ambition  the  free 
trade  movement  of  the  past  century  has  been  for 
the  most  part  an  attempt  to  check.  The  theory 
of  free  trade  is  directed  against  the  theory  that 
neighbourhood1  groups  should  go  out  of  their  way 
to  express  group  spirit.  The  theory  of  free 
trade  is  a  revolt  also  against  neighbourhood 
exclusiveness.  The  truly  primitive,  unmitigated 
protectionist  objects  to  the  importation  of  foreign 
goods  on  any  terms.  A  Juarez  Pueblo  Indian 
watching  me  one  morning  drinking  a  cup  of  coffee 
remarked  that  his  people  were  said  to  have  thrown 
away  the  coffee  beans  the  Spaniards  had  given 
them.    Among  the  Akiktiyu  the  introduction  of 

1  In  so  far  as  tariffs  are  maintained  through  class  interests 
(the  interests  of  a  dynastic  house  or  of  groups  of  manufacturers  or 
groups  of  their  employees),  logically  they  represent  an  encroach- 
ment by  caste  upon  the  larger  neighbourhood  or  national  group. 
Even  so  they  are  made  to  appeal  to  the  neighbourhood  or  national 
sentiment,  its  sentiment  of  self-aggrandizement.  For  example, 
to  keep  up  the  standard  of  living  of  the  American  workman, 
whatever  the  cost  to  the  consumer,  is  represente^as  a  patriotic 

duty. 

/ 
/ 


Place-Fellowship  67 

11  breakfast  foods"  would  have  been  no  easy  job, 
such  is  the  native  repugnance  to  unaccustomed 
cereals. ■  The  tin  boxes  Speke  carried  on  his  expedi- 
tion through  East  Africans  well  as  Speke  himself, 
were  objected  to  by  the  natives. 

Not  only  foreign  goods  are  objectionable,  we  see, 
but  the  foreigner  himself.  He  is  kept  out  alto- 
gether or  admitted  with  care  and  under  suspicion. 
As  an  alien  he  is  (discriminated  against  in  many 
ways.  His  right  to  trade  is  questioned,  or  his  right 
to  labour.  Participation  in  the  communal  inter- 
ests or  rights  is  denied  him.  He  may  have  no  voice 
in  government  or  he  may  be  ineligible  to  office. 
Only  a  native  born  American  can  become  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States.  Sometimes  the  for- 
eigner has  to  live  in  a  locality  assigned  him.  The 
right  to  make  use  of  the  communal  land  or,  given 
private  ownership,  the  right  to  acquire  title  to 
land  may  be  denied  him.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  the  Turks  allowed  no  foreigner  to  wear 
green.2 

Shutting  the  alien  out  of  communal  lands,  deny- 

xRoutledge,  p.  49. 

2  A  Pepys  of  Mogul  India,  p.  5      New  York,  19 13. 


68  Social  Freedom 

%  ing  him  the  right  to  hunt  over  them  or  pasture 
J  cattle,  is  merely  a  practical  expression  of  group 
1  exclusiveness,  in  this  case  of  neighbourhood 
'exclusiveness,  but  denial  of  the  right  to  hold  land 
given,  as  in  California  or  in  Russia,  the  prevalence 
of  private  ownership,  this  denial  is  an  outcome  of 
the  mere  ambitiousness,  the  idealistic  ambitious- 
ness  of  a  social  category.  The  very  existence  of 
national  boundary  lines — when  there  is  no  com- 
munal territory — is  evidence  of  the  idealistic 
spread  of  the  spirit  of  neighbourhood.  The 
boundaries  of  tribal  territory  may  correspond  to 
practical  needs  and  actual  uses,  but  the  boundary 
lines  of  the  modern  state  are  mere  manifestations 
of  an  overgrown  and  purely  sentimental  sense  of 
neighbourhood,  the  hypertrophy  which  is  an 
essential  component  of  the  emotion  we  call 
patriotism. 

In  this  emotion  group  conceit  is  also  essential. 
To  the  patriot,  one  race  or  people,  his  own,  is 
intrinsically  superior.  The  Hottentots  call  them- 
selves "the  men  of  men"  and  many  tribes  name 
themselves  merely  the  men.  Of  a  gentle-mannered 
foreigner  a  Greenlander  will  say  "he  begins  to  be  a 


Place-Fellowship  69 

man,"  i.  e.t  a  Greenlander.1  We  too  commend  a 
man  as  being  " a  white  man,"  M  after  all  an  Aryan," 
"just  like  an  American."  "if  a  great  people," 
says  a  Russian  patriot,  "does  not  believe  that  the 
truth  is  only  to  be  found  in  itself  alone  (in  itself 
alone  and  in  it  exclusively) ;  if  it  does  not  believe 
that  it  alone  is  fit  and  destined  to  raise  up  and 
save  all  the  rest  by  its  truth,  it  would  at  once  sink 
into  being  ethnographical  material,  and  not  a  great 
people."2 

Nationalism  is  the  huge  tumor  group  conceit  has 
let  grow  in  modern  times  upon  place-fellowship. 
And  on  it  are  two  other  growths,  colonization  or 
imperialism  and  national  or  racial3  assimjlptiqp. 
Under  the  name  of  national  honour,  welfare,  glory, 
the  group  aggrandizement  goes  on,  nationalization 
physically  and  psychically  we  must  have,  we  say 
or  assume,  nationalization  at  all  costs  and  by  all 
means,  by  the  pressure  of  ridicule  or  scorn,  by 

1  Westermarck,  Edward,  The  Origin  and  Development  of  the 
Moral  Ideas,  vol.  ii.,  p.  172.     London,  1908. 

2  Dostoevsky,  The  Possessed,  p.  234.     Tr.  C.  Garnett. 

3  Hereafter  I  shall  omit  the  term  "race."  It  is  " only  a  disguise 
of  the  idea  of  nationality."  (Boas,  Franz,  "Race  and  Nation- 
ality," Bull.  Amer.  Ass.  for  International  Conciliation,  p.  8, 
Jan.,  1915.) 


70  Social  Freedom 

intolerance  of  all  differences  between  those  who 
join  us  and  ourselves,  by  endless  other  forms  of 
social  compulsion,  not  omitting  war. 

And  the  tumor  thrives  at  the  expense  of  healthy- 
tissue.  Real  neighbourhood  interests  are 
neglected.  Its  own  railway  franchises  are  stolen 
from  the  community,  or  its  rate  of  traffic  accidents 
grows  appalling,  while  it  concerns  itself  with  the 
securing  by  its  Foreign  Office  of  the  right  to  build 
a  railway  in  an  undeveloped  country.  Its  own 
watersheds  or  watercourses  are  polluted  or  rendered 
unsightly,  while  its  attention  is  set  upon  the  build- 
ing of  a  great  canal  through  another  continent 
by  the  national  government.  That  their  nation 
acquire  a  piece  of  territory  rich  in  forests  or  mines 
seems  more  important  to  people  than  to  plant 
trees  on  their  own  streets  or  remove  the  dumps 
in  their  own  yards  or  clear  out  their  own  gutters. 
The  failure  of  a  brigand  band  to  salute  their 
national  flag  seems  more  of  a  disgrace  than  sending 
their  little  children  to  work  at  night  in  mill  or 
factory. 

The  co-operative  spirit  is  not  fostered  by  the 
national  spirit,  nor  the  spirit  of  autonomy.    Rather 


Place-Fellowship  *  71 

are  they  confused  and  diverted,  diverted  to 
foreign  conquest  or  colonization,  and  so  confused 
that  to  bring  to  people  a  sense  of  reality  they  need 
to  be  embodied  in  a  figurehead,  a  ruler.  In  his 
person,  group  character  is  best  pictured,  group 
virtue  respected.  Through  personification  the 
fiction  of  nationality  takes  on  a  semblance  of 
actuality.  Vetat  c'est  mot  was  a  milder  piece  of 
arrogance  than  we  commonly  think.  How  effec- 
tual a  bit  of  mysticism  it  is,  the  embodiment  of 
the  tribe  in  its  chief,  of  the  state  in  its  sovereign 
or,  to  use  the  republican  term,  in  its  represent- 
ative, we  see  today  in  the  conflict  between  the 
European  nations.  But  for  the  realization  of 
itself  through  its  chiefs,  the  spirit  of  national- 
ism might  not  be  working  such  great  havoc  to 
the  world. 

To  preclude  such  havoc  in  the  future  two 
political  notions  are  gaining  currency — a  spread 
of  political  democracy,  a  world  federation.  Both 
these  views  are  open  to  criticism,  the  one  as  inade- 
quate for  the  end  in  mind,  the  other,  as  commonly 
held,  as  vicious  in  its  conception.  Is  not  the  demo- 
crat contenting  himself  with  words?     The  leaders 


72  Social  Freedom 

of  a  democracy  are  quite  as  much  its  embodiment, 
/quite  as  potent  instruments  for  its  political  myths 
(as  the  most  ardent  believer  in  his  own  divine  right 
to  govern,  and  a  democracy  may  be  as  ready  as  an 
autocracy  to  go  to  war.  As  for  the  idea  of  world 
federation,  if  it  means,  as  it  generally  does  in  the 
popular  political  philosophy,  merely  a  larger 
state  than  any  of  the  existing  nations,  a  greater 
aggrandizement,  a  world  federation  in  this  sense 
is  an  even  greater  fiction  than  the  fiction  of  na- 
tionalism, the  emotion  it  inspires  about  humanity 
perhaps  a  more  dangerous  sentimentality  than 
patriotism. 

One  of  the  circumstances  of  the  European  war 
furnishes  an  illustration  for  a  different  social 
ambition.  We  are  told  that  the  men  in  the  oppos- 
ing war  trenches  are  overcome  from  time  to  time 
by  the  mere  fact  of  their  neighbourhood;  they 
fraternize,  they  make  friends.  They  share  the 
opportunities  their  neighbourhood  supplies,  the 
water  supply,  recreation,  some  bizarre  chance  for 
amusement.  Such  joint  pastimes  must  be  en- 
gaged in  somewhat  surreptitiously  for,  say  the 
officers,  if  they  were  to  any  extent  allowed,  the 


Place-Fellowship  73 

men  would  not  fight.1  Before  the  reality  of 
neighbourhood,  the  unrealities  of  nationality 
would  vanish. 

From  our  political  philosophy  why  not  let  them 
also  vanish?  By  giving  up  its  pretensions,  the 
spirit  of  place-fellowship  may  come  into  its  own 
and  at  the  same  time  cease  to  be  a  drag  upon 
social  progress.  It  has  only  to  recognise  its  limita- 
tions, distinguishing  between  its  own  natural,  in- 
defeasible interests  and  world-wide  interests.  All 
matters  of  communication  and  transportation, 
currency,  scientific  research,  many  matters  of 
health  and  sanitation,  let  place-fellows  appreciate 
as  functions  of  a  world-wide  administration,  many 
matters  of  water,  light,  heat,  and  power  supply, 
as  functions  of  administrative  units  corresponding 
to  natural  divisions,  of  water  commissions,  for 
example,  whose  jurisdiction  will  cover  an  entire 
watershed.  Their  own  peculiar  interests  consist 
of  facilities  for  recreation,  for  rest  or  convalescence, 
for  education,  for  hospitality,  for  economic  co- 


1  "Ain't  it  'Ell  to  get  up  every  morning  and  have  to  hate  the 
Germans!"  exclaims  Tommy  Atkins  in  a  recent  cartoon  of  a 
British  trench  at  daybreak.     {The  Masses,  July,  19 15.) 


74  Social  Freedom 

■  operation  in  endless  ways.  In  other  words  let 
I  fellowship  be  determined  by  objective  realities, 
by  the  world  as  it  is,  rather  than  by  a  sense  of 
subjective,  mystical  union,  a  union  regardless  or 
contemptuous  of  natural  facts  or  conditions. 
Their  interest  undiverted  to  remote,  mystical 
ends,  place-fellows  will  make  the  most  of  the 
resources  of  their  neighbourhood,  conserving  and 
improving  them.  The  idea  of  communal  rights  to 
the  beauties  and  resources  of  nature  will  develop. 
Streams  and  lakes  and  ocean  beaches,  forests  and 
mountain  heights  will  cease  to  be  private  property. 
Perhaps  the  theory  of  land  holding  at  large  will 
change,  the  land  to  be  leased  to  the  highest  bidders 
or  taxed  in  some  such  way  as  the  single-taxers 
propose.  Given  this  source  of  income,  neighbour- 
hood facilities  might  be  greatly  increased — brooks 
and  rivers  and  lakes  and  woods  stocked  and 
preserved  for  all,~gardens  and  parks  set  out,  and 
wild  stretches  kept  wild.  Those  means  to  the 
enjoyment  of  outdoor  life  which  most  persons 
cannot  forego  and  yet  cannot  afford  would  also 
be  made  communal — courts  and  fields  for  outdoor 
games,  boats  and    boat-houses,  rest-houses  and 


Place-Fellowship  75 

open-air  pavilions.  And  neighbourhood  indoor 
life  would  be  made  interesting  and  diverting 
through  communal  places  of  amusement,  of 
instruction,  and  of  meeting.  There  would  be 
public  guest-houses,  and  the  practice  of  collective 
hospitality  would  become  an  important  part  of  the 
community  life. 

There  would  be  not  only  public  hostelries  for 
visitors,  transport  would  be  entirely  free — from 
one  street  to  another,  from  one  end  of  the  world  to 
another.  Then  travel  would  become  a  normal 
part  of  everybody's  life.  The  habit  of  living  in 
lairs  would  die  out.  People  would  learn  in  what 
parts  of  the  world  they  could  do  best — best  for 
themselves  and  for  their  chosen  community.  In 
other  words  a  distribution  of  population  would 
become  possible  in  accordance  with  natural  f acili- . 
ties  and  with  human  idiosyncrasy  or  disposition. 
Great  congestions  would  cease,  and  involuntary 
individual  isolation. 

Nor  would  the  isolation  of  any  local  group  long 
continue  possible.  The  pressure  upon  it  of  other 
groups  it  would  not  withstand,  once  it  fully  realized 
that  in  the  particulars  it  most  cared  for  its  right 


\ 


76  Social  Freedom 

to  home  rule  was  guaranteed,  and  in  course  of  time 
its  truly  anti-social  resistances  to  the  standards  of 
other  groups  would  break  down.  This  view  of 
the  voluntary  conformity  of  backward  groups  is, 
I  am  well  aware,  open  to  challenge.  I  can  but 
retort  that  the  experiment  of  standardizing 
pacifically  and  as  far  as  any  direct  benefit  is  con- 
cerned disinterestedly  a  backward  local  group 
has  never  been  tried,  indeed  it  has  never  even 
been  considered.1 

Am  I  picturing  an  Utopia?  There  is  much 
already  in  contemporaneous  conditions  and  ten- 
dencies to  justify  the  picture.  Consider  the 
amazing  gains  within  the  century  in  communica- 
tion and  transportation;  consider  the  gains  in 
freedom  of  trade,  in  economic  co-operation,  in  the 
sanitation  of  large  areas,  in  the  conservation  of 
natural  resources;  consider  what  is  called  the 
democratization  of  education,  of  hygiene,  of  pleas- 
ure.    That  all  these  movements  have  had  different 


1  Perhaps  in  this  connection  missionary  efforts  come  to  mind. 
They  have  been  on  the  whole  pacific  and  disinterested.  But 
what  kind  of  standardizing  have  they  attempted?  Surely  not 
the  kind  that  is  respectful  of  the  purely  local  variation  and 
concerned  only  with  the  inter-group  relation. 


Place-Fellowship  77 

motives  and  methods,  that  there  has  been  little 
or  no  schematic  social  philosophy  about  them, 
may  affect  but  little  their  final  practical  outcome. 
Where  do  they  lead?  is  the  question  of  moment, 
not  Whence  have  they  come? 

But  the  social  philosophy  is  indeed  changing. 
The  theory  of  communal  aggrandizement  is  yield- 
ing to  the  theory  of  communal  co-operation,  the 
enlargement  of  communal  facilities  is  becoming  the 
only  criterion  for  the  enlargement  of  administra- 
tive units,  social  impulses  and  ideas  are  being 
purged  of  their  mystical  element. 

It  is  because  of  this  mystical  element  that  dis- 
possession of  communal  resources  is  so  meekly 
born.  The  lack  of  jl  real  place-fellowship  is  com- 
pensated  for  in  the  imagination  by  a  fictitious  unit 
of  fellowship,  by  nationalism.  The  sense  of 
neighbourhood  lost,  the  assurance  we  crave  of 
belonging  to  a  group  is  given  by  a  sense  of  na- 
tionality. The  group  sense  thus  satisfied,  we 
become  indifferent  to  neighbourhood  communism. 
It  is  a  vicious  circle.  But  let  neighbours  once  come 
into  their  own  and  this  sense  of  nationality  will 
languish.     Neighbourliness  at  a  distance  will  yield 


78  Social  Freedom 

to  neighbourliness  at  close  hand.  The  gregarious 
instinct  will  not  have  to  go  abroad  for  satisfaction. 
The  sense  of  social  solidarity  or  participation  will 
be  satisfied  by  realities,  not  make-believe.  From 
the  dreams  of  world  empire  men  will  awake  to  find 
themselves  in  a  real  community  needing  them  and 
by  them  needed.  One  more  step  men  will  have 
taken  away  from  mysticism  and  towards  reality. x 
Accompanying  this  step  there  will  be  a  great  shift 
of  direction  in  the  collective  will  to  power.  In 
primitive  culture  that  will  expresses  itself  in  shap- 
ing fellow-creatures.  In  modern  life  the  tendency 
grows  for  the  collective  will  to  spend  itself  on  the 


1  This  particular  step,  I  may  be  told  and  told  persuasively  by 
readers  of  that  very  enlightening  book,  Professor  Veblen's  Im- 
perial Germany  and  the  Industrial  Revolution,  this  particular  step 
would  be  merely  a  step  back  to  the  anarchistic  neighbourhood 
groups  from  which  our  neolithic  Baltic-North  Sea  culture  has 
emerged.  I  have  indeed  taken  account  of  the  home  rule  spirit 
of  that  culture,  in  a  way  that  to  Professor  Veblen  may  seem  a 
curious  bit  of  atavism,  an  unconscious  verification  too  of  his 
theory  of  our  racial  urge,  unconscious  because  it  is  only  as  this 
writing  goes  to  print  that  I  have  read  his  discerning  analysis.  I 
have  taken  account  of  the  home  rule  spirit  because  I  had  to — I 
felt  it  in  myself  and  in  the  people  around  me.  But  that  spirit, 
I  believe,  may  be  saved  from  the  mystical  excesses  it  has  been 
guilty  of  in  the  past,  saved  too  from  being  played  upon  by 
dynastic  ambitions,  by  a  more  enlightened  self-interest  and  a 
greater  appreciation  of  the  world  at  large,  a  critical  appreciation 
utterly  impossible  of  course  to  the  early  Baltic  culture. 


Place-Fellowship  79 

conditions  people  live  under.  Nationalism  or 
imperialism  has  been jmjputcome  of  the  early  type 
of  the  will  to  powgii_jrtLefellowship  to  come  will 
satisfyjtself  through  controlling — not  people — but 
conditions.^ 

Group  dominion,  nationalism  or  imperialism,  is 
the  last  conspicuous  refuge  of  the  mystic.  Just  as 
for  the  religious  zealot  there  is  no  plate  for  nation- 
alism, for  the  ardent  nationalist  there  is  no  need  of 
religion — suffer  it  though  he  may  as  a  kind  of  ser- 
vant, as  Jahveh  is  today  being  called  in  to  valet 
Pan-Germanism  or  Pan-Slavism,1  or  the  Shinto 
gods,  the  Japanese  State. 

But  it  is  not  for  the  sake  of  bushido  or  kultur, 
not  for  nation  or  empire,  that  the  world  calls  for 
redistricting.  Whatever  redistricting  they  may 
effect  in  the  years  or  even  centuries  to  come,  impe- 
rialists or  nationalists  will  remain  unconvincing 
and  archaic  figures,  figures  enslaved  to  a  social  cate- 
gory, figures  overcome,  whether  as  conquerors  or 
as  conquered,  by  their  political  status. 

1  "God  is  the  synthetic  personality  of  the  whole  people,  taken 
from  its  beginning  to  its  end,"  declares  Shatov  in  The  Possessed. 
"You  reduce  God  to  a  simple  attribute  of  nationality,"  rejoins 
Stavrogin. 


80  Social  Freedom 

Freedom  from  this  subordination  is  going  to  be 
an  extremely  slow  and  indirect  process,  a  matter  of 
infinite  adjustments,  of  endless  experiment,  of 
that  conversion  of  men's  minds  to  which  no  time 
measures  can  be  applied.  It  will  be  the  final  fruit, 
in  any  social  future  we  can  at  all  foresee,  of  the 
habit  of  meeting  facts  which  modern  culture  ini- 
tiated and  of  the  substitution  it  encourages  of 
personality  desires  for  status  desires.  In  that 
consummation,  one  foresees  every  person  in  the 
world  a  member  of  many  political  groups,  ranging 
from  his  own  neighbourhood  to  a  world-wide 
electorate.  One  foresees  the  world  electorate  and 
each  of  its  subdivisions  determined  by  the  inter- 
ests natural  to  each.  One  foresees  the  globe 
covered  by  local  self-governing  groups  varying 
from  a  mere  handful  of  persons,  from  single  per- 
sons in  fact,  to  groups  of  many  thousands.  The 
natural  resources  of  these  groups  are  communal. 
From  one  to  the  other  the  degree  of  economic  co- 
operation will  vary  greatly — from  completely 
individualistic  enterprise  to  completely  collectivis- 
tic.  The  tendency  in  all  of  them  will  be  away  from 
control  of  persons  to  control  of  nature  and  econ- 


Place-Fellowship  8 1 


er 


omy,  but  her£  too  the  differentiations  will  be  very- 
great.     Each  group  will  be  connected  with  other 
groups  or  with  the  whole  world  through  a  world-  / 
wide  system  of   free  communication  and    trans-/ 
portation,  through  free  trade,  through  the  common/ 
possession  of  natural  facilities,  through  a  common 
sanitary  system,  through  its  claims  upon  scientist! 
and  upon  all  kinds  of  practical  experts.'    All  inter- 
group  functions  will  be  administered  by  representa- 
tives from  all  the  groups  concerned,  or  rather  fo: 
wide-spreading  functions  there  will  be  larger  con- 
solidations.     For  world-wide  functions  there  will 
be  a  world-wide  group. 

This  is  world  federation,  if  you  like,  but  world 
federation  based  not  on  any  fictitious  principle 
of  mystical  unity  but  on  actual  conditions  and  the 
need  of  efficient  functioning.  It  will  come  about 
through  experience,  not  through  mysticism.  Mys- 
tical ideas  of  humanity,  the  theory  of  the  brother- 
hood of  man,  have  given  history  great  figures, 
figures  withal  pitiful  and  grotesque.  The  theory 
has  provoked,  too,  great  tragedies,  for  in  the  long 
run  responsibility  for  much  persecution  and  for 
many  wars  must  be  shouldered  by  it.     The  Cru- 


82  Social  Freedom 

sades  and  the  Inquisition  were  its  perfectly  logical 
expressions.  Even  greater  and  more  grotesque 
tragedies  are  ahead  of  us  if  the  notions  of  many 
of  our  contemporaneous  world  federationists  take 
shape.  Desire  for  the  brotherhood  of  man  is  as 
much  a  status  desire  as  any  other  class  desire. 
For  it  to  be  realized,  mankind  would  have  to  be- 
come a  single,  homogeneity-exacting  class,  appall- 
ingly tyrannical,  a  monster  of  oppression.  But 
despite  temporary  triumphs,  will  this  mystical 
desire  for  human  brotherhood,  ever  be  realized? 
An  anachronism  as  it  is  in  modern  culture,  to  that 
culture's  dominant  desire  for  the  free  expression 
of  personality  must  it  not  in  time  succumb? 


FRIENDSHIP 

NTEIGHBOURS,  lovers,  brothers,  "they  are 
good  friends  too,"  one  sometimes  hears. 
"Your  dear  friend,  accidentally  your  fond  mother,' ' 
wrote  a  woman,  the  other  day,  so  I  heard,  to  her 
daughter — to  the  scandal  of  the  girl's  school- 
mistress. To  that  lady,  no  doubt,  friendship  is  an 
upstart  category,  for  it  to  usurp  the  place  of  kin- 
ship or  even  intrude  upon  it  is  an  impertinence. 
Never  would  she  agree  with  Cicero  that,  because  of 
its  essential  benevolence,  friendship  is  superior  to 
kinship.  All  friendship  deserves,  she  thinks,  is 
a  subordinate  place.  "Your  best  friend,  because 
your  mother,"  would  have  been  the  seemly  re- 
ference. 

Borrowing  plumage  is  nothing  new  for  friend- 
ship, and  it  is  from  kinship  it  most  often  borrows. 
Its  assimilation  is  made  ceremonially  through  a 
covenant  of  brotherhood.  When  a  Masai  wishes 
to  make  a  person  his  brother  or  sister  he  gives  the 

83 


84  Social  Freedom 

other  a  red  bead — an  ol-tureshi.  Thereafter  each 
calls  the  other  patureshi,  the  giver  or  receiver  of  a 
bead.  *  Not  a  bead,  but  blood  is,  in  many  cases, 
as  we  know,  the  seal  of  adoptive  brotherhood. 
Among  the  Akikuyu,  for  example,  blood  drawn 
from  the  forehead  and  chest  of  each  covenanter  is 
placed  in  the  roasted  heart  of  a  sheep.  The  heart 
is  then  divided  and  each  eats  half.2  Thereafter, 
kindred  spirits,  each  no  doubt  will  stand  up  for  the 
other  through  thick  and  thin. 

The  age-class  is  also  called  upon  to  buttress 
friendship.  We  speak  of  childhood's  friends, 
friends  from  the  nursery.  Growing  up  together,  is 
it  not  "natural"  for  you  to  feel  friendly?  In 
those  New  Guinea  settlements  whose  age-classes  I 
referred  to  it  is  too  "natural"  to  be  optional. 
You  must  feel  friendly.  If  you  not  only  belong  to 
the  same  kimta  but  live  in  the  same  hamlet,  to  your 
chum  or  eriam  you  must  lend  your  fishing  nets,  or, 
if  his  garden  crop  has  failed  him,  you  will  provide 
him  and  his  with  food.  You  will  even  lend  him 
your  wife.3    There  are  other  settlements  in  New 

x  Hollis,  p.  323.  a  Routledge,  p.  176. 

3  Seligmann,  pp.  472-3. 


Friendship  85 

Guinea  where  the  fathers  of  boys  or  girls  born  on 
the  same  day  exchange  presents — dogs,  pigs,  arm- 
shells — and  thereby  make  their  infants  fast  friends, 
friends  for  life. ■ 

School  and  college  friendships  borrow  somewhat 
too  from  the  age-class.  The  different  " years" 
keep  apart.  Most  of  the  " secret  societies"  of 
Yale  are  composed  of  men  in  the  same  year,  the 
outgoing  group  choosing  the  incoming.  At  the 
College  of  Maynooth  the  personal  choice  is  some- 
what greater.  Three  students  may  arrange  to 
walk  together  after  supper,  in  different  sets  for 
each  night  of  the  week,  the  arrangement  lasting 
for  the  year;  but  in  Catholic  Dublin  as  in  Con- 
gregational New  Haven  the  college  classes  them- 
selves are  kept  apart — at  Maynooth  the  junior 
house  for  all  purposes,  the  senior  and  middle 
meeting  only  for  meals,  eaten  in  silence.  a 

1  Seligmann,  pp.  69,  70. 

2  O'Donovan,  Gerald,  Father  Ralph,  pp.  195, 204-5.  New  York, 
19 14.  The  retention  of  the  age-class  in  ecclesiastical  circles  is 
one  of  the  many  evidences  they  give  of  conservatism.  They 
are  retentive,  too,  of  sex  and  caste  distinctions.  As  for  kinship 
and  place-fellowship,  those  categories  likewise  get  the  support  of 
the  Church,  unless  they  become  too  arrogant.  Even  friendship 
has  the  backing  of  the  gods.  "Where  two  faithful  friends  meet, 
God  makes  up  the  third. "    Supernatural  sanctions  attach  every- 


86  Social  Freedom 

Growing  old  together  is  also  an  achievement  of 
friendship,  and  sometimes  old  people  are  bullied 
a  little  by  their  juniors  into  being  friends  just 
because  they  are  of  an  age.  A  recent  autobio- 
graphist  describes  how  there  lives  at  the  other 
end  of  her  town  another  old  lady  whom  she 
likes  but  with  whom  she  has  never  been  really 
intimate.  "My  children,"  she  writes,  "feel  that 
I  don't  see  enough  of  women  of  my  own  age." 
They  therefore  have  recourse  to  the  old  lady  across 
town,  one  Mrs.  Allen.  ' '  You  look  '  down '  mother ; 
shan't  I  telephone  to  Mrs.  Allen?  Or  let  me  run 
down  in  the  motor  and  get  her  for  you."  Or, 
"I'm  just  going  over  to  Lembury;  shan't  I  drop 
you  at  Mrs.  Allen's  for  a  half-hour?"  "Mrs. 
Allen,"  chuckles  the  writer,  "has  become  to  me 
the  symbol  of  'amusing  mother'."1 

Caste  too  may  be  a  mainstay  for  friendship. 
Are  there  not  business  or  professional  friends, 
political  friends,  friends  to  count  on  or  stand  up 
for,  friends  to  play  or  spree  with,  friends  made 


where  to  the  covenants  of  friendship.     (Westermarck,  vol.  ii. 
pp.  208-9.) 

1  Autobiography  of  an  Elderly  Woman,  pp.  125-6. 


Friendship  87 

friends  as  among  the  Koita  of  New  Guinea,1  by 
a  smoke  or  chew,  friends  to  pass  the  summer  with, 
friends  to  talk  to,  many  of  these  quasi  caste- 
free  friends  summed  up  in  that  bizarre  phrase 
"social  friends* ' — the  friends  you  do  not  make  use 
of,  at  least  not  obviously,  whom  yet  you  would 
have  of  your  own  station  in  life,  your  peers?  "  The 
most  valuable  and  lasting  friendship  is  that  which 
exists  between  persons  of  the  same  rank," — the 
wording  of  the  doctrine  is  Javanese. 2 

Friends  as  friends,  mere  friends,  when  one  comes 
to  think  of  it  and  to  take  seriously  the  reiterated 
opinion,  mere  friends  are  indeed  rather  rare,  and 
the  art  of  making  friends  to  many,  one  suspects, 
unknown,  j  The  relationship  may  be  so  regardless 
of  conventions,  so  heedless  of  status.  It  cancels, 
as  Emerson  says,  the  thick  walls  of  sex,  age,  rela- 
tion, circumstance,  those  protective  barriers  most 
of  us  cannot  do  without.  And  then  having  thrown 
down  our  defences,  it  sets  up  such  exorbitant 
demands.     It  expects  a  personal  relationship. 


1  Seligmann,  p.  69. 

2  Raffles,  Th.  S.,  The  History  of  Java,  vol.  i.,  p.  289.    London, 
1830. 


88  Social  Freedom 

In  view  of  this  expectation,  however  unfulfilled 
it  may  go,  why  account  friendship  among  the  social 
categories  at  all?  Because,  I  take  it,  although 
friendship  has  had  a  glimpse  of  that  contact  be- 
tween personalities  society  will  sometime  rejoice 
in,  yet  even  in  its  purer  forms  it  is  enough  of  a 
conventionalized  relationship  to  be  entitled  to  a 
place  as  a  social  institution.  Exclusiveness,  we 
surmise,  is  the  foremost  character  of  the  social 
category,  and  friendship  tends  to  be  exclusive.  Let 
its  own  standard  bearers  and  classical  authorities 
testify.  l *  He  who  has  many  friends  has  no  friend/ ' 
is  a  maxim  not  only  of  Aristotle  but  of  every  Euro- 
pean people.  Cicero  has  Laelius  refer  to  Scipio 
as  a  friend  such  as  he  had  never  had  before  and 
never  would  find  again;  and  friendship,  he  expli- 
citly states,  is  an  affection  confined  to  two  "or  at 
any  rate  to  very  few,  "x  a  view  of  the  boundaries 
of  friendship  often  favoured.  Friendship  "  cannot 
subsist  in  its  perfection,  say  some  of  those  who  are 
learned  in  this  warm  lore  of  the  heart,  betwixt  more 
than  two. "  If  for  himself,  Emerson  adds,  he  is  not 
so  strict  in  his  terms,  it  may  be,  he  suggests, 

1  Cicero,  De  Amicitia,  iii.,  v. 


Friendship  89 

because  he  has  not  known  so  high  a  fellowship  as 
others. "  Whether  an  expression  of  its  nobility  or 
of  its  conventionality,  friendship,  model  friend- 
ship, has  certainly  been  thought  of  through  the 
centuries  as  a  pairing.  Famous  friends  have  gone 
in  pairs — Orestes  and  Pylades,  Damon  and  Pythias, 
Nesius  and  Eurialus,  Roland  and  Oliver.  In 
humbler  circles  too,  such  exclusiveness  is  recog- 
nized. "My  best  friend, "  we  say,  "my  bosom 
friend,' '  or,  in  the  oriental  phrase,  "a  friend — one 
soul,  two  bodies.' ' 

Friendship  gives  that  sense  of  union  and  assur- 
ance of  likeness  that  is  the  very  breath  of  life  to  the 
social  category.  Emerson's  reference  to  the  prac- 
tice of  exchanging  names  with  a  friend  recognizes 
the  desire  for  identification — even  if  the  interpreta- 
tion is  a  bit  of  modern  rather  than  primitive  tran- 
scendentalism. The  practice,  he  writes,  "would 
signify  that  in  their  friends  each  loves  his  own 
soul,"  or,  in  Cicero's  words,  looked  "upon  a  kind 
of  image  of  himself."2  The  entire  strength  of 
friendship,  according  to  Cicero,  is  an  entire  agree- 
ment of  inclinations,  pursuits,  and  sentiments,  "a 

1  Friendship,  2  De  Amicitia,  vii. 


90  Social  Freedom 

complete  union  of  feeling  on  all  subjects."1  To 
live  in  friendship,  writes  another  Roman,  "is  to 
have  the  same  desires  and  the  same  aversions. " 

And  that  they  may  remain  the  same,  Sallust 
might  well  have  added,  they  must  be  stable. 
Friendship,  true  friendship,  is  ever  held  to  be  a 
stable  relationship,  imparting  the  same  sense  of 
permanency  the  other  social  categories  assure  us 
of,  only,  being  less  certain  of  its  position  in  society, 
friendship  feels  called  upon  to  be  more  self-asser- 
tive. Its  backers  are  constantly  vouching  for  its 
orthodoxy.  "I  feel  as  if  I  had  known  you  always, "  -j ** 
your  good  friend  tells  you.  "  True  friendships  r:re  ' 
eternal/ '  writes  Cicero.2  "Qui  cesse  d'etre  ami, 
ne  Vafamais  ete. 

In  this  account  of  the  categorical  character  of 
friendship  we  have  referred  most  often  to  Cicero 
and  Emerson.  To  read  them  together  is  exciting, 
so  informing  is  it  of  the  ways  traversed  in  two 
thousand  years  not  only  by  the  category  of 
friendship,  but  by  the  categorical  in  general.  The 
philosophers   agree   in   their   conception   of    the 

1  De  Amicitia,  iv.,  v. 

2  lb.,  ix.  Because,  forsooth,  nature,  and  in  nature  friendship 
originates,  nature  can  never  change. 


Friendship  91 

essence  of  friendship,  to  both  it  is  compounded  of 
sincerity  and  tenderness ;  to  both  it  is  a  personal 
relationship.  But  to  the  modern  it  has  sloughed 
off  in  large  part  its  more  primitive  features. 
Emerson  has  no  desire  that  his  friend  be  his 
counterpart.  "  Let  him  not  cease  an  instant  to  be 
himself.  The  only  joy  I  have  in  his  being  mine, 
is  that  the  not  mine  is  mine.19  By  the  unlikeness 
of  his  friend  he  is  stimulated,  not  abashed  or 
frightened.  He  does  not  crave  the  assurance  of 
congeniality  so  precious  to  Cicero.  Nor  is  the 
unbroken  companionship  of  his  friend  desirable  to 
Emerson.  He  is  even  anxious  to  hold  him  at  arm's 
length,  to  keep  him  at  a  distance  which  to  Cicero's 
way  of  thinking  no  proper  friendship  could  survive. 
11  Leave  this  touching  and  cloying.  .  .  .  You 
shall  not  come  nearer  a  man  by  getting  into  his 
house.' '  "Oh,  but  you  do!"  We  can  hear 
Cicero  exclaiming.  "We  had  one  house  between 
us,  Scipio  and  I, "  boasts  Laelius,  Cicero's  spokes- 
man, "the  same  food,  we  were  inseparable. " x    To 


}  De  Amicitia,  xxvii.  "They  cease  to  be  friends  who  dwell 
afar  off,"  was  the  Latin  maxim  corresponding  to  the  Greek: 
"Friends  living  far  away  are  no  friends." 


92  Social  Freedom 

Cicero  it  was  the  virtue  in  a  man  that  made  him 
your  friend.  You  could  not  help  caring  for  him 
because  of  the  uprightness  of  his  life,  the  worth  of 
his  character.  Although  to  Emerson  virtuousness 
was  a  large  part  of  friendship,  it  was  enough  that 
you  imputed  it  to  your  friend.  He  might  be  a 
rascal  if  only  you  thought  him  a  hero.  The  reac- 
tion  of  your  imagination  means  much.  And  to 
the  modern  New  Englander  friendship  is  a  more 
imaginative  relationship  than  to  the  ancient 
Roman,  more  alert  and  spontaneous,  more  joyous, 
more  of  the  spirit.  Neither  could  entertain  the 
idea  of  satiety  in  friendship,  but  Emerson,  because 
of  the  aloofness  necessary  from  time  to  time  to  the 
intercourse  of  souls,  Cicero,  because  "  everything 
which  is  oldest  ought  to  be  sweetest. "  Nor  would 
Emerson  ever  have  endorsed  with  Cicero's  hearti- 
ness the  aphorism,  "many  bushels  of  salt  must 
be  eaten  together"1  before  a  friend  is  a  friend 
indeed.  To  Cicero  age  counts  for  much  in  friend- 
ship, and  at  least  once  in  his  essay  the  age-class 
i  definitely  figures.  The  youthful  cannot  be  friends, 
I  he  holds,  for  with  divergence  of  tastes  and  interests 

1  De  Atnicitia,  xix. 


Friendship  93 

their  relationship  will  cease  and,  he  seems  to  argue, 
a  relationship  to  which  there  is  an  end  cannot  be 
a  friendship.  It  is  as  ever  the  stable,  the  perma- 
nent which  appeals  to  the  mind  of  antiquity. 

It  appeals  also  to  the  transcendentalists  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  but  less  simply,  more  covertly. 
The  Ding  an  sich  is  a  sublimation,  as  it  were,  of  the 
sense  of  the  validity  of  age,  of  the  orientation 
towards  seniority.  To  analyse  the  essence  of 
friendship  is  the  last  struggle  of  the  social  category 
for  domination;  the  metaphysics  of  personal  rela- 
tionships is  the  dying  gasp  of  the  categorical. 


INTERCLASSIFICATION 

nPO  get  standing  and  respectability,  friendship, 
the  newcomer,  keeps  peculiarly  close  to  the 
other  social  categories,  but  all  the  categories  are 
more  or  less  in  league,  confirming  and  vitalizing 
one  another.  Reverence  for  age  is  enhanced  by 
respect  for  rank  when  it  is  the  old  men  in  a  com- 
munity who  hold  its  positions  of  trust  and  dignity, 
or  when  social  position  depends  upon  advancing 
years.  "Befitting  his  age  and  station/ '  we  say, 
not  clearly  distinguishing  the  measure  due  each 
condition.  Nor,  alleging  that  one  we  know  is  too 
young  and  unimportant  for  a  given  place,  do  we 
trouble  to  make  out  the  relation  between  the  two 
disqualifications.  How  youth  and  age  are  kept 
in  their  place  in  relation  to  sex,  courting  or  marry- 
ing at  the  risk  of  derision,  we  have  already  noted. 
The  position  of  the  old  maid  we  might  also  have 
mentioned.  "What  sight  can  be  more  pitiable  or 
repulsive,' '  wrote  in  1846"** a  young  lady's  com- 

94 


Interclassification  95 

panion, H  "than  that  of  a  female,  advancing  in  the 
vale  of  years,  yet  retaining  her  inordinate  thirst 
for  the  society  and  admiration  of  gentlemen !"x 
A  snub  indeed  for  the  old  maid! 

But  the  married  woman  is  kept  in  her  place,  too, 
through  classification  by  age.  I  have  heard  her 
referred  to  as  the  "old  woman' '  by  Anglo-Saxon 
husbands.  More  exact,  a  Masai  calls  his  wife  by 
the  age-class  to  which  she  actually  belongs. 2  By 
her  young  bachelor  acquaintances,  we  may  note 
however,  a  Masai  married  woman  is  addressed  as 
"old  lady,"3  the  barrier  of  even  a  supposititious 
difference  in  age  too  serviceable  to  be  foregone. 
"There  cannot  be  a  more  absurd  or  disgusting 
affectation,"  opines  the  Rev.  John  Bennet,  than 
for  married  women,  "the  sober,  aged  autumn," 
to  wear  girlish  ornaments,  "the  livery  of  spring.  "&' 

Between  sex  and  caste,  and  sex  and  place- 
fellowship,  there  are  close  relations,  witness  the 
various  kinds  of  marriage  restrictions  based  on 
belonging  to  different  local  groups  or  based  on 
caste,  witness  the  insistence  on  celibacy  by  certain 

x  Coxe,  p.  52. 

a  Hollis,  p.  303.     It  is  "  unlucky  "  to  call  her  by  her  own  name. 

3  lb.,  pp.  286-7.  *  Letters  to  a  Young  Lady,  p.  146. 


96  Social  Freedom 

castes,  or  the  exclusion  of  either  the  married1  or 
the  unmarried2  from  community  life.  Moreover 
men  and  women  are  far  shyer  in  general  with  one 
another  when  there  is  a  difference  of  class  between 
them  or  a  difference  of  residence.  Separate 
residence  is  often  a  feature  of  the  separation  in 
general  of  the  sexes.  In  Blackfellow  hordes,  for 
example,  the  men's  camp  is  separate  from  the 
women's.  Among  the  Todas  there  are  old  men's 
villages  and  on  the  West  Coast  of  Africa  there  are 
settlements  of  women  who  have  had  the  misfor- 

x  In  illustration  of  the  harem  point  of  view  I  quote  an  author 
of  our  pioneer  West.  M  The  wife  resigns,  or  ought  always  to  re- 
sign her  claims  to  general  attention ;  and  to  concentrate  and  con- 
fine her  regards,  and  wishes,  and  objects,  to  her  chosen  companion 
and  domestic  claims  and  scenes.  She  has  quitted  the  public 
stage."     (Coxe,  pp.  257-8.) 

2  The  unmarried  Corean  is  shut  out  from  adult  society;  in 
affairs  of  importance  he  has  no  voice.  He  is  but  a  child.  (Griffis, 
W.  E.,  Corea,  p.  246.  New  York,  1907.)  A  statute  of  colonial 
Connecticut  forebadeany  "house-keeper"  or  "master  of  a  fam- 
ily" without  allowance  of  the  selectmen  to  give  "entertainment 
or  habitation"  to  a  single  person.  (Howard,  G.  E.,  A  History  oj 
Matrimonial  Institutions,  vol.  ii.,  p.  153.  Chicago  &  London, 
1904.)  "A  single  woman  is,  particularly,  defenceless,"  writes 
the  Rev.  John  Bennet.  "She  cannot  move  beyond  the  precincts 
of  her  house  without  apprehensions.  She  cannot  go  with  ease  or 
safety  into  public. "     {Letters  to  a  Young  Lady,  p.  232.) 

Among  the  Kols  of  India,  thanks  to  the  belief  that  the  un- 
married are  soulless,  the  celibate  dead  are  shut  out  from  joining 
the  shades  of  their  ancestors.  (Van  Gennep,  A.,  Les  Rites  de 
Passage,  p.  218.     Paris,  1909.) 


Interclassification  97 

tune  to  give  birth  to  twins.  Even  separate 
heavens  have  been  assigned  to  the  sexes.  The 
Nahuatl  believed  the  souls  of  men  lived  in  the 
East,  the  souls  of  women,  or  rather  of  the  select 
among  women,  in  the  West.1  The  ideas  of  the 
Blackfellows  of  New  South  Wales  were  more 
hazy,  but  wherever  the  souls  of  women  did  go, 
it  was  not,  they  were  persuaded,  to  the  heaven  of 
the  men. 2 

Kinship  also  accentuates  sex  distmctions;  its 
rules  of  endogamy  or  exogamy  favouring  indirectly 
grouping  by  sex.  It  avowedly  supports  the  cate- 
gory of  sex  when  youths  are  taught  to  honour  their 
mother  or  sister  in  the  person  of  all  women,  or  at 
least  of  all  "nice"  women,  or  when  an  older  man 
is  expected  to  treat  a  girl  "as  if  she  were  his 
daughter." — On  the  other  hand  sex  distinctions 
may  accentuate  kinship.  Sex  relations  between 
kindred  or  between  those  who,  like  foster  or 
adoptive  relatives  or  god-parents,  have  assimilated 
themselves  with  kindred  are  taboo. 

xNuttall,  Zelia,  "The  Fundamental  Principles  of  Old  and 
New  World  Civilizations, "  Archcel.  &  EthnoL  Papers  of  the 
Peabody  Museum,  vol.  ii.  (1901),  p.  38. 

2  Westermarck,  vol.  ii.,  p.  673. 


98  Social  Freedom 

jCinship,  caste,  and  place-fellowship  are  all 
jinked  together.  In  China  the  officials  of  a  district 
a  parricide  lived  in  were  put  out  of  office  or  de- 
moted; his  immediate  neighbours  were  severely 
punished. x  Family  rows  in  general  are  condemned 
by  one's  neighbours,  and  neglect  of  family  duties 
criticized  or  penalized.  In  India  a  failure  to 
attend  wedding  or  funeral  ceremonies  or  to  invite 
to  them  the  expectant  relatives  calls  for  outcasting. 
The  rank  of  a  Chinese  ruler  who  showed  a  lack  of 
filial  piety  through  neglecting  his  ancestral  rites 
was  reduced, 2  just  as  in  the  upper  circles  of  Euro- 
pean society  the  conception  of  noblesse  oblige 
has  been  at  times  a  means  of  controlling  wayward 
progeny.  We  have  already  noted  the  service  of 
the  eponymous  ancestor  in  binding  together  the 
citizens.  The  tie  of  blood  may  be  an  explicit 
condition  of  holding  land.  It  is  a  rule  among  the 
Kabyles  that  whosoever  bequeaths  his  property 
to  "an  unrelated  stranger"  is  fined  and  his  bequest 
is  void. 3    Cuzco,  the  capital  of  ancient  Peru,  was 

1  Doolittle,  vol.  i.,  p.  140.        f 

2  Lt  Kt,  bk.  iii.,  sec.  ii.,  15. 

*  Hanoteau,  A.  and  Letoumeux,  A.  La  Kdbylie  et  les  coutumes 
Kabyles,  vol.  iii.,  p.  367.     Paris,  1893. 


Interclassification  99 

divided  into  four  quarters,  the  quarters  pre- 
sumably of  the  different  Inca  clans.  Neighbours 
have  also  in  certain  settlements  to  be  castemen. 
In  the  cities  of  ancient  Egypt  members  of  the  same 
craft  formed  one  neighbourhood.  The  mediaeval 
guilds  of  Europe  lived  together,  as  live  today  the 
guilds  of  Chinese  cities.  Although  the  castes  of 
India  are  distributed,  castemen  tend  to  group 
themselves  in  one  locality.  Communities  like 
those  in  the  Nilgiri  Hills  where  the  Todas  are  the 
herdsmen,  the  Badagas,  the  agriculturists,  the  Ko- 
tas,  the  artisans,  such  groups  cannot  be  differen- 
tiated at  all  into  caste  and  tribe. 

And  yet  perfect  co-operation  between  the  social 
categories  there  is  not ;  at  times  they  clash,  hinder- 
ing or  checking  one  another.  Friendship,  per- 
haps because  it  is  the  youngest  of  them  all,  is 
often  snubbed.  "All  confidential  discourse  with 
persons  of  your  age  is  to  be  avoided,  writes  one 
of  the  counsellors  of  young  ladies  I  often  quote. 
"If  you  must  have  a  confidant,  a  mother  or  aunt 
is  the  proper  person"1 — kinship  and  age-class 
we   see  here  ranged  together  against  friendship, 

1  Coxe,  p.  71. 


ioo  Social  Freedom 

friendship  decked  in  the  feathers  of  age-class. 
Aversion  to  the  " confidential  discourse' '  of  friend- 
ship is  frequently  displayed,  too,  by  caste  groups. 
Take  the  Catholic  orders.  Their  rule  generally 
provides  that  their  members  avoid  walking  to- 
gether in  couples. ■ 

But  friendship  in  turn  may  assert  itself.  It 
sometimes  breaks  down  the  sex  category,  albeit  sur- 
reptitiously or  timidly.  So  timidly,  in  fact,  that 
it  generally  continues  to  avow  adherence  to  the 
separation  of  the  sexes.  Among  the  South  Slavs 
when  friendship  was  sworn  between  a  man  and 
woman,  the  covenant  precluded  sexual  intimacy 
on  pain  of  supernatural  disaster.  "A  snake  will 
bite  you,"  sings  the  girl  whose  sworn  brother 
courts  her  in  a  Dalmatian  folk-song.2  It  is  not 
by  a  snake  but  by  a  special  term,  Platonic  friend- 
ship, that  among  us  friendship  assures  sex  its 
barriers  will  be  preserved. — The  keeping  up  of 
sex  barriers,   let  us  note  incidentally,   may  be 


1  In  these  sophisticated  circles,  perhaps  a  precaution  against 
homosexuality.  It  seems  unnecessary  in  this  discussion  to 
comment  on  the  relations  between  friendship  and  homosexuality. 

2  Krauss,  F.  S.,  Sitte  und  Branch  der  Siidslaven,  pp.  638-41. 
Vienna,  1885. 


Interclassification  101 

quite  in  the  interest  of  friendship.  A  friendship 
between  two  of  the  same  sex  is  generally  supposed 
to  be  imperilled  by  the  intrusion  of  one  of  the 
opposite  sex.  For  a  dowried  bride  Roman  friend- 
ships had  been  known  to  break.1  The  Areoi, 
those  gay  blades  of  the  Pacific,  were  not  allowed 
to  marry,  a  companion  running  no  risk  of  having 
to  say,  like  a  college  classmate,  "  since  he  is 
married  I  see  nothing  of  him  at  all." 

Between  place-fellowship  and  kin,  conflicts  arise. 
If  a  Behring  Strait  Eskimo  had  relatives  on  the 
other  side  of  a  war,  he  would  blacken  his  face  with 
charcoal  and  stay  out  of  the  fight,2  a  position  of 
neutrality  not  uncommonly  taken  by  kinsmen 
when  their  respective  communities  go  to  war. 
Elsewhere,  on  the  other  hand,  the  kin  is  called  upon 
to  yield  to  the  State  control  over  its  members  or 
its  right  to  defend  them.  Among  us,  for  example, 
although  the  man  who  avenges  the  rape  of  his 
daughter  is  never  brought  to  justice,  he  who  kills 
the  seducer  of  his  sister  enjoys  no  such  immunity. 


1  Cicero,  De  Amicitia,  x. 

3  Nelson,  E.  W.,  "The  Eskimo  about  Behring  Strait,"  p.  329, 
XViii.  (1896-7),  Ann.  Rep.  Bur.  Amer.  Ethn. 


102  Social  Freedom 

There  is  conflict  too  between  place-fellowship 
and  caste^  In  India  members  of  the  same  caste 
in  different  places  may  not  marry.  Nor  may  a 
barber  casteman  go  into  another  village  to  practise 
the  tonsorial  art.1  Trade-unionism  in  this  coun- 
try is  more  independent  of  place-fellowship. 
Although  asserting  itself  against  the  national 
spirit  the  immigrant  brings  with  him  from  abroad, 2 
and  in  this  way  an  indirect  contributor  to  American 
nationality,  it  is  itself  " un-American' '  in  its  de- 
mands for  class  privileges.  But  covertly,  not 
boldly,  like  syndicalism.  Trade-unionism  is  a 
caste  movement  ignoring  nationalism  or  compro- 
mising with  it.  Socialism  still  further  com- 
promises with  nationalism,  calling  upon  the  State 
to  suppress  a  rival  caste  by  taking  over  itself  the 
capitalist  function.     But  syndicalism  is  a  frankly 


1  Dubois,  pp.  22,  63. 

2  There  were  in  1906  twenty-six  nationalities  represented 
in  the  coal  fields.  At  first  the  unions  organized  by  nationality 
— so  hostile  were  the  Lithuanians,  for  example,  to  the  Poles, 
the  Magyars,  to  the  Slovaks.  Now  among  the  United  Mine 
Workers  it  is  not  so  much  a  question  as  to  whether  a  man 
is  Polish  or  Italian,  as  whether  he  is  union  or  non-union. 
(Huebner,  G.  G.,  "The  Americanization  of  the  Immigrant," 
Annals  of  the  Am.  Acad,  of  Social  &  Polit.  Sci.,  vol.  xxvii. 
(1906),  p.  664.) 


Interclassification  103 

anti-state  movement.  It  is  for  craft  control  of 
industry  against  community  control.1  To  it  the 
political  industrialism  of  socialism  is  anathema. 

x  See  Macdonald,  J.  Ramsay,  Syndicalism.    Chicago. 


CONCLUSION 

/^^ONFLICT  between  the  social  categories  there 

has  been ;  but  in  a  far  view  of  social  history 

the  categories  appear  to  stand  together,  moved  by 

a  common  spirit  and  set  against  a  common  foe. 

Their  spirit  is  apprehensiveness  and  intolerance    ,v 

tf¥l 
of  the  unlike  and  of  change;  their  foe,  the  evanes- 
cent, multiform  spirit  of  personality.  Through 
their  classification  the  gregarious  instinct  is  satis- 
fied in  segregated  groups,  groups  of  the  alike 
separated  from  groups  unlike.  And  each  category 
more  or  less  strives  to  impose  its  character  upon 
what  lies  without  its  natural  boundaries.  Be- 
tween them,  the  categories  divide  up  phenomena 
much  as  the  Chinese  divide  up  nature  into  the 
elements  of  water,  fire,  wood,  metal,  and  earth,  or 
as  we  classified  in  our  childhood  in  a  game  called 
"Twenty  Questions/'  its  first  question  always, 
"animal,  vegetable,  or  mineral?" 

From  such  a  rigid  classification  the  mind  as  it 
104 


Conclusion  105 

matures  seeks  escape.  So  a  maturing  culture 
struggles  against  its  categories.  At  first  it  aims 
for  mobility  within  them  and  then,. as  in  these 
latter  days,  for  freedom  away  from  them.  The 
time  comes  when  it  will  drop  its  crude  scheme  of 
classification  altogether,  letting  the  facts,  so  to 
speak,  take  care  of  themselves.  J  Thus  age  and 
sex,  kinship,  occupation,  neighbourhood  will  count 
merely  like  other  facts  ir\.  life,  their  fetichistic 
influence  gone.  As  factors  in  personalily  they 
will  have  to  be  reckoned  with,  but  as  social  barriers 
they  will  be  negligible.  The  freest  possible  con- 
tact between  personalities  will  be  recognized  as 
the  raison  d'etre  for  society,  and  to  the  developing 
of  personal  relationships  will  be  turned  the  energies 
spent  in  the  past  upon  blocking  and  hindering 
them,  f  No  more  segregated  groups,  no  more 
covetous  claims  through  false  analogy,  no  more 
spheres  of  influence,  for  the  social  categories.  And 
then  the  categories  having  no  assurances  to  give 
to  those  unafraid  of  change  and  tolerant  of  un- 
likeness,  to  those  of  the  veritable  new  freedom,  to 
the  whole-hearted  lovers  of  personality,  then  the 
archaic  categories  will  seem  but  the  dreams  of  a 


106  Social  Freedom 

confused  and  uneasy  sleep,  nightmares  to  be  for- 
gotten with  the  new  day.  Already  the  wind  of  its 
dawn  is  astir.  It  is  high  time  to  analyse  our 
dreams;  once  fully  awake,  analysing  them,  re- 
calling them  even,  may  be  irksome  and  distasteful, 
perhaps  impossible. 


14  DAY  USE 

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